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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
6
Mixed:
21
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
Feb 19, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Wilson’s Backstrom is just downright rude and in-your-face belligerent, and, at times, it can be tough to swallow. That’s where the supporting cast comes in. Polaha and Rosen are particularly winsome characters, providing additional touches of humor and helping to soften Wilson’s hard edges. A little more of them and little less of Wilson will go a long way.
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Jan 16, 2015
Season 1 Review:
There are some interesting ideas, like calling out Gen-Xers for romanticizing pessimism, and several well-cast, offbeat supporting characters, but Backstrom needs to find a more cohesive voice and stronger case-of-the-week plots if it wants to keep walking the prime-time beat.
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Jan 20, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Unfortunately, in the first episode, the show overdoes Backstrom's unlikability to the point where it's an open question whether viewers will return to see subsequent episodes, where he becomes less hard to take, and we learn more about why he is the way he is.... The more encouraging news is that judging from two additional episodes made available for preview, Backstrom--which is based on a series of novels written by Swedish criminologist Leif G.W. Persson--calms down and gets better as it goes along.
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Jan 16, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Unlike "The Office," Backstrom hasn't yet fleshed out the supporting characters to water down Wilson's well-oiled obnoxiousness generator. Once it stops explaining everyone's backstory--why is he so bitter? why is she so naive? why are the firefighters evil?--Backstrom might turn into a decent chase for the bad guy of the week.
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Jan 16, 2015
Season 1 Review:
As beloved as Mr. Wilson is from “The Office,” as it is written the character of the curmudgeon Backstrom doesn’t seem trenchant enough to be memorably offensive or socially tart. Yet if enough viewers pray long enough for his evolution, they may be rewarded by taking other pleasures from the show.
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Jan 22, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Mr. Wilson does his best to make the character unapologetically snarly, and Backstrom does benefit from a lighter tone thanks to the unpredictable nature of the lead character. But in form and style, Backstrom is exactly what viewers have come to expect from "House" wannabes.
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Jan 21, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Unfortunately, rather than draw us in to the character, Wilson pushes us farther away. The performance isn't just charmless; it's overly defined and emphatic. There are too many moments when you feel that you're watching an actor make choices rather than watching a character simply be.
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Jan 13, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The exteriors overplay Portland’s constant gloomy rain (it’s the wettest crime show since “The Killing”), but a couple more episodes might offer a ray of hope as the writers start to find ways to turn Backstrom into a person you’d want to spend an hour with each week.
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Jan 22, 2015
Jan 21, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Not only is Backstrom hackneyed for giving us another TV misanthrope who’s forgiven for his sociopathic impulses, but it’s a bad example of that genre. The tone jumps all over the place, from slapstick to black comedy to drama to dramedy, in a way that often seems accidental and usually is awkward. The cases of the week are flat-out lame. And none of the nasty lines that Backstrom mutters fly; they just lie there.
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