Alpha House

It's an accomplished piece of work. And it gains heft from a number of impressive cameos.

A very funny political comedy from "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau and journalist Jonathan Alter that could hold its own with HBO's "Veep."

In tone, Alpha House tacks much more closely to Veep but it shares certain elements with House of Cards as well, most notably the superb camerawork and smart writing.

Amazon’s Alpha House is a polished comedy--not a game-changer, but the kind of show a premium service should be happy to have.

The show isn't exactly laugh-out-loud funny, but it's smartly written and the cast jells from the start.

What separates it from "Veep" is that Alpha House almost seems possible, and it's not just because of similarities between the characters and real pols. It's about the mind-set, the dealing, arrogance and boorishness of our shaky legislative branch.

The writing is smart, the characters are amusing, the cameos (including one from Bill Murray, and another from Stephen Colbert as himself) are entertaining, and the political commentary is as pointed as you might suspect.

Political comedies tend to work best when they're absurdist (like Duck Soup, or HBO's Veep) or much, much subtler (the gold standard being Tanner '88, a collaboration between Trudeau and Robert Altman). Alpha House falls somewhere in the middle and gets stranded there, though the company is so likable that it's a limbo you may not mind being stranded in.

Mr. Trudeau has a feel for not just political hypocrisy but also character, and this cast manages to bring life and even some charm to these Capitol Hill caricatures. Alpha House is not yet as sharply honed as “Veep,” but it could get there; it certainly has plenty of material to work with.

A funny but not particularly inventive political comedy about four Republican Senators sharing a house in Washington, D.C.

Another of those amusing but not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny sitcoms that are so popular on premium cable channels.

Alpha House is about men caught up in a crazy-making system; even with all of its concrete details, that means it feels very similar to the (for now) much funnier Veep.... Alpha House may be Amazon’s first original program, but it doesn’t feel all that original.

The best reason to stick with Alpha House so far is that its ideas are stronger than its execution.... If Trudeau wants to argue, say, that today’s GOP is hypocritical, extreme, or dangerous, that’s fine--that’s satire--but it would be stronger and funnier if it engaged with a non-caricature version of the party.

The show is so tight--maybe too tight--that it starts to choke on its own power-tie premise in the first three episodes.

Alpha House feels like social studies homework. On a Saturday night.

[Alpha House is] not very memorable or notable, at least not in the pilot episode that’s been made available for review.