• Network: BET
  • Series Premiere Date: Feb 5, 2019
Season #: 2, 1
User Score
3.0

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 9 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 9
  2. Negative: 5 out of 9

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User Reviews

  1. Mar 28, 2019
    4
    What I found exciting about American Soul is the anticipation of watching the back stories surrounding Soul Train. I used to watch Soul Train back in the day when I was a young teen, so I do have at least a foundation. This show is floundering. It doesn't spend a lot of time on the set, we're not hearing the music, we're not seeing the acts, and we're not seeing a lot of what happenedWhat I found exciting about American Soul is the anticipation of watching the back stories surrounding Soul Train. I used to watch Soul Train back in the day when I was a young teen, so I do have at least a foundation. This show is floundering. It doesn't spend a lot of time on the set, we're not hearing the music, we're not seeing the acts, and we're not seeing a lot of what happened behind the Soul Train set. The flashbacks are confusing and I'm losing interest. It needs to rebound and refocus on the MUSIC and the dancers, not burning buildings. Expand
Metascore
70

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Reviewed by: Troy Patterson
    Feb 5, 2019
    60
    It renders Don Cornelius (Sinqua Walls), the creator and host of “the hippest trip in America,” as an archetypal entrepreneur, and pushes the existential overtones of his striving to the front of the mix. ... The agonies of the secondary characters--the aspiring dancers and anguished assistants and shady scenesters--range from social melodrama to crime melodrama, from buppie-career-angst melodrama to escape-from-South Central melodrama.
  2. Reviewed by: Robert Lloyd
    Feb 5, 2019
    70
    Corny in its broad strokes, with narrative twists that will shock no viewer familiar with television, it is often appealing in its particulars; the dialogue has a natural, twisty flow when it's not bent under the weight of exposition or stretching too far toward profundity.
  3. Reviewed by: Ed Bark
    Feb 5, 2019
    67
    The scenes from the set of Soul Train are well-captured and choreographed. But BET’s still limited production budgets are reflected in recurrent Vietnam War sequences involving the Clark kids’ father. They’re phony-looking to say the least, and really not needed at all. Walls, formerly of Starz’s Power series, is effective as Cornelius, although not to the point of blowing anyone away.