- Network: NBC
- Series Premiere Date: Mar 1, 2012
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Critic Reviews
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Awake grabs you, unnerves you, breaks your heart and even makes you work a little.
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Yup, the story can be downbeat, the pace at times languid. But this is a show with a brain and a heart.
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Notwithstanding a certain stylistic chilliness and my sense of it having been pitched on the back of "Inception," it promised to be one of the year's best and most interesting new series. Having seen four episodes now, I'd say the promise has been largely kept.
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After watching four episodes, I can say that Awake has an addictive quality to it.
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Well acted and smartly written, Awake works as an intellectual puzzler, emotional family drama and case-of-the-week procedural.
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If Killen and Gordon don't exactly maintain the quality of the pilot each week - subsequent episodes don't look as rich nor pack as big an emotional whallop - they come close enough, particularly in dealing with Britten's work and family lives.
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Creator Kyle Killen has set up a provocative, appealing puzzler, full of knottiness for the intellect and emotion for the heart. [2 Mar 2012, p.70]
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Awake may be hard to categorize, but it's worth our attention.
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The cop stuff feels like it could be happening in any other NBC cop show; I kept expecting Prime Suspect's Maria Bello to show up in that cute hat. But given the originality on display, and the venue, those are minor complaints.
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Awake manages something impressive: it focuses unflinchingly on the subject of loss, yet manages to be not a downer or painful to watch, but moving, absorbing and even hopeful.
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While the premise sounds confusing, and sometimes is when it comes to the details of the dueling crimes-of-the-week, the producers and writers do a good job of keeping the worlds distinct and vivid, including some neat visual flourishes and subtle color coding.
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Amid this seeming disorder, Jason Isaacs breathes a wry life into Britten, as a man who slowly feels himself accessing levels of consciousness and perception he never imagined, even as his psychiatrists label them "illness" and his work partners question their relevance.
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If people stay with it, what they'll find are exceptional performances, some truly fine writing and a premise, by virtue of being complicated, that could unspool some really interesting plotlines.
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The hero of Awake has a psychiatric problem; there are no aliens or ghosts to explain away the more improbable turns, and this adventure is far more compelling.
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I'd be happy enough with this cast and this concept to simply wander along for a bit, ignoring the trail of bread crumbs and focusing on the lengths one man might go to hold onto those he loves.
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It is exploring new turf in terms of a relationship drama with a bold narrative premise, and vaguely spiritual aspirations.
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The pilot's strength was neither accidental nor fleeting: Each subsequent episode has evocative moments that flirt with that early greatness, even if they're not as riveting.
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It packs some punch, though. And Isaacs certainly doesn't sleepwalker through a decidedly distinctive role.
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A tricky show with serious potential. [5 Mar 2012, p.45]
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On Awake, the concept is all. Consequently, it takes a little explaining.
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Generally they do their best to walk a fine line, attempting to execute the show in as uncomplicated a way as possible so less devoted viewers keep watching while rewarding obsessive fans with small steps forward in the exploration of Britten's condition.
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The good news is that the unusually ambitious Awake succeeds at several of the things it's attempting, and star Jason Isaacs grounds the drama with a charismatic yet subtle performance.
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An elaborate mystery is always compelling, and here, episode after episode, we search for clues, for some sign that will let us distinguish between reality and imagination.
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It's mentally exhausting, at least in tonight's opener, to figure out exactly what the heck is going on here, and in which reality we're placed at any given moment.
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No one wants to return to the color-by-numbers plotting of Diagnosis: Murder, but there is such a thing as demanding too much effort from an audience without sufficient reward. Glum, grim and increasingly confused, Awake qualifies.
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NBC's newest drama Awake adds a drop of fantasy to its crime procedural formula and then practically buries it in musings about the mysteries of the subconscious.
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As lovingly written and organized as it is, the viewer must divide his or her time picking up on different scenarios and moods, caught between rather ho-hum murder cases and this other, more beguiling attempt to craft a show that is about the nature of loss and grief.
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What sounds like a daring concept is quickly undercut by attempts to wrap the show in a police-procedural format.
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Viewers who don't regularly contemplate alternative-reality issues probably should tape the show as well as watch it, because the non-expert may have to watch it twice just to figure out what's going on, or even to understand what parts we don't understand.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 138 out of 155
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Mixed: 9 out of 155
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Negative: 8 out of 155
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Mar 1, 2012
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Mar 1, 2012
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May 12, 2012