Vox.com's Scores

  • TV
For 358 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 The Underground Railroad: Season 1
Lowest review score: 20 The Briefcase: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Mixed: 0 out of 252
  2. Negative: 0 out of 252
252 tv reviews
  1. It feels, in every way, like a broadcast network TV show about the investigation of a police shooting.
  2. Unsolved Mysteries manages to satisfy both its old and new audiences and deliver at least one case that’s as unique as it is baffling. The rest of the half-season is weaker, but “Thirteen Minutes” gives fans plenty to work with.
  3. Maniac isn’t weird enough to really achieve what it wants to, but it does say something--however accidentally--about how reality is already weird enough.
  4. There's only so much mileage the show can get from focusing on "everyone on this show is awful" gags. But with sharp performances and total commitment to the hedonistic material, The Mick still finds a couple new places to explore.
  5. All the Money frequently felt truncated, its story too sprawling for any of its characters to really connect, only Plummer holding the story together; Trust, meanwhile, feels a little scattered and bulky, constantly distracted by whatever catches its fancy when it might be better off bearing down and focusing on a particular storyline.
  6. If the series ultimately gives in to the kind of structural gimmicks that keep its first episodes from moving forward--like the flashbacks upon flashbacks--it could easily collapse in on itself and settle into being a decent, if unremarkable drama. But if it takes a step back, pares down some of those devices, and lets its compelling characters tell the stories, The Family could become something a whole lot more interesting.
  7. It knows what it wants, and every so often, it even achieves it. But when it falls short, it’s even more disappointing to know that it got so close.
  8. If this documentary added anything substantially new to the conversation that Serial began in 2014, its efforts might feel more worthwhile. Instead, in its determination to uncritically embrace the narrative Serial created, it accomplishes the opposite of its aim to show that Syed was wrongfully convicted.
  9. In short, it’s a mixed bag. The show’s signature fight scenes are still fantastic, as is the Punisher himself, Jon Bernthal. But something seemed to go wrong in the writers’ room this go-round, and even with a new dynamic that changes Frank’s life, there are still some stories in play that might have been better wrapped up in season one.
  10. Unfortunately, the season four premiere has revealed that Sherlock’s most promising and divisive element in the wake of the season three finale--the evolving three-way relationship between Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch), John Watson (Martin Freeman), and John’s mysterious wife, Mary (Amanda Abbington)--is little more than a giant distraction, a red herring for ... whatever the show has up its sleeve next.
  11. This show (which will run for eight episodes total; I’ve seen seven) lapses into flatness whenever it possibly can, and it is always very ready to tell you exactly who is right and who is wrong in any given situation. In the end, it all ends up feeling exhausting.
  12. Murder Among the Mormons, Netflix’s latest true crime docuseries, feels weirdly bloated and malnourished all at once.
  13. While the cast is solid enough that it can sell almost anything, taking a third trip to Camp Firewood makes for a reunion that would’ve been best left to our imaginations.
  14. Love's first four episodes are so overstuffed with bland filler that episodes two, three, and four could've been cut altogether, and the show could've skipped right from the pilot with "The Date" without the plot losing much importance. The show's saving grace is that the far more interesting end of season one is a promising sign for season two, which Netflix ordered months before the show even premiered.
  15. It all chugs along under the basic idea that you don’t need to have too many feelings about what’s actually happening onscreen as long as everything is beautiful to look at--until the final two minutes of the pilot, when two estranged lovers meet in an empty room.
  16. Legends still has a ton of potential, largely thanks to its talented cast. Before it can realize that potential, however, the show will have to course-correct from some seriously clunky, scattered missteps.
  17. When Emerald City builds much of its narrative around how weird and edgy the place is, it just feels tired. You’ve seen this take on Oz before--and done better.
  18. You, Me and the Apocalypse is a character-driven piece that's awkwardly shoehorned into a plot-driven piece, and that means neither side entirely works.
  19. It wants to be a stupid time travel show about people chasing a bad guy into the past to preserve American history. And on that level, I think it succeeds!
  20. The thrill of exploration, or the examination of family dynamics, never feels like it arises organically from the action, in the way it might have on the show’s most obvious forebear that isn’t its direct predecessor: Lost.
  21. It throws a wide array of actors, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Aya Cash, Marc Maron, Elizabeth Reaser, Orlando Bloom, and Raúl Castillo, into varying scenarios about love, sex, marriage, and everything in between, and the results are, predictably, mixed. In the end, though, the series indulges way more mundane ramblings than anything particularly interesting.
  22. Like most new comedies this fall, Young Sheldon isn’t yet very good at conveying what it’s trying to do. But what it’s trying to do is more interesting--and potentially more artistically exciting--than whatever first impressions you might have of the show. The series is at once better and worse than what you’d expect.
  23. On the whole, however, the show simultaneously feels like it has too much going on--in that there are eight regulars to service, all with their own season-long story arcs--and too little--in that there's rarely any real conflict between the characters.
  24. Physical would be unwatchable misery if it wasn’t for Byrne’s performance. Her Sheila is a mess that’s fraying at her edges. In Byrne’s hands, that jittery exterior gives way to a bellowing sadness and frustration not just at her life gone wrong, but also the state of the world around her.
  25. Roadies isn’t all there yet, but it’s trying something different.
  26. Ghosted’s cast works hard to sell every ounce of plodding exposition.
  27. In many ways, House of Cards has become an entirely different show between season two and season three, and in ways that seem mostly half-hearted.
  28. The season struck me as too artistically conservative in many places. In particular, Moments in Love requires you to be all in on Denise and Alicia’s marriage early on for the later strife they face throughout the fertility treatment process to land. ... The tight frames of this season don’t imprison the characters. They imprison the show itself.
  29. The Mandalorian is perfectly fine entertainment. But it’s also fundamentally empty entertainment and not a great harbinger for many Disney+ original programs to come.
  30. For now, the series functions much the same as the oil the McCullochs desperately seek in the early 1900s storyline: It’s obvious something is there, but nobody has figured out how to get to it.

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