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Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
Jun 10, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Though there are a few moments where Kelley gives in to his tendencies for burlesque – as in the characterization of the principal of the elementary school attended by the main characters’ children – in the first three episodes, “Big Little Lies” retains the invigorating mix of dark comedy and drama that made the first season so special. ... Rather than running out of gas in its second season, “Big Little Lies” is more deliciously watchable than ever.
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Jun 7, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Big Little Lies is offering up some of the best psychological storytelling on television. ... Somehow, this kind of rigorous, thoughtful probing still manages to coexist in perfect harmony with the show’s barbed sense of humor, an incongruence that Streep, in particular, seems to relish. ... But the dazzle of Big Little Lies—the money and the stars and the searing comedy of modern manners—can’t override how incisive the show is about its characters, their damage, and their desires.
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Jun 5, 2019
Season 2 Review:
There is indeed more to say about these women and the fallout from the events of season one, as well as more exquisiteness to enjoy. ... But it’s not just Streep who is fascinating to watch. While all of the principal cast members were terrific in season one, each of them gives even richer performances this season.
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Feb 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Thanks to the stellar work of Vallee, Kelley and the top-flight cast, Big Little Lies, like its characters, delivers a high-sheen surface. But, unlike some self-consciously glum prestige TV dramas, Big Little Lies isn't afraid to be entertaining, mixing intimate, dark drama with sly social commentary. It's one of the best shows of this still-young year.
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Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The series is so exquisitely conceived and structured--and so remarkably acted by a top-notch cast that includes two of Hollywood’s most resolute performers, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon--that the soapy layer quickly rinses away in the first episode. What remains is a deeply absorbing, highly addictive murder mystery matched with a carefully considered psychological work-up of an elite community.
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Jun 7, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Not the least of Big Little Lies' achievements is its relentless mockery of the moneyed class of California progressives from which most of its cast and writers presumably spring. Its characters embrace every crackpot totem of fashionable liberalism with bubblehead enthusiasm that masks a profound lack of sincerity.
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Jun 9, 2019
Season 2 Review:
“Big Little Lies” is a fairly apportioned ensemble vehicle, giving each actor room to shriek, to cackle, to clutch a glass of wine nervously as she stares at the surf. ... But no character propels scenes quite like Kidman’s Celeste. ... Kidman’s nonjudgmental inhabiting of Celeste’s oscillations continues to be exceptional. ... Streep gives Mary Louise a vicious and eerily hilarious maternal edge. She is clearly having a ball. I can’t wait to see how her story line expands.
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Jun 9, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Perhaps the most exciting development in Big Little Lies’ second season is that there’s more depth to each of the characters, allowing Witherspoon, Dern, and Kravitz in particular to give even more impressive performances. ... The show appears to be exchanging an all-consuming, incendiary mystery for a tale that’s less mercurial but no less hearty, and it’s still an absolute pleasure to watch.
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Jun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
This second season is worth it just for the opportunity to watch Streep have fun. ... “Big Little Lies” still takes time for the gauzy flashbacks as Celeste grapples with assorted emotional responses during sessions with her therapist (Robin Weigert), but the whole enterprise feels peppier, poppier and more entertaining as viewers spend more time with these pretty people with pretty significant problems.
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Feb 17, 2017
RogerEbert.comFeb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Big Little Lies offers a modern take that is consistently engaging and artistically rewarding. Narratively, it could have been one or two episodes shorter than its seven-episode length (the plot doubles back and spins its wheels a few times). But this world has been so fully-realized and perfectly calibrated by the cast and crew that you’ll probably wish it was one or two episodes longer.
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Feb 10, 2017
Season 1 Review:
An all-star cast--Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgard, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern, all of whom live up to their advance billing--and an absorbing story (courtesy of TV vet David E. Kelley) that will keep you guessing each and every step of the way.
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Jun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
While it may lack some of the bite and urgency of its first season thus far, Big Little Lies is still an absolutely gorgeous series with a lot to unpack in terms of its complex women, the legacy of abuse, the makeshift families we form, and protecting one’s friends.
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May 31, 2019
Season 2 Review:
In its second season, Big Little Lies remains the same moody suspense-drama that fans fell in love with during its initial run. There are no jarring formula changes or new gimmicks to keep it going; this is simply the second half of the same story, with a very slight break in time, and it works.
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Jun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Though its focus is more scattered this time around, Big Little Lies recaptures much of the magic of the first season, especially in the performances. ... Kelley is once again writing every episode, it seems, so the barbs are just as acidic, often more so when they’re delivered by Streep, who deftly adjusts Mary Louise’s sparring strategy with each new combatant.
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Feb 11, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Just when you worry the show is a pageant of ugly cliches about female rivalry, it gives you a poignant, nuanced scene to deepen the whole. ... Big Little Lies invests you in mysteries and the renewal and re-liberation of its women. Hopefully it can transcend to big little truths, too. [17 Feb 2017, p.50]
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The TimesJan 7, 2020
Jun 10, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Streep is the real wonder in this scene, but I did also admire the finesse with which the show has worked out a Streep-time-sharing scheme. ... Kidman’s Celeste would obviously get time with someone playing her mother-in-law, but the actresses and the series’ writer David E. Kelley had to come up with something a little more creative for Witherspoon’s Madeline. The solution, like the entire second season, works better than it has any right to, a compromise—to create more content, to get Reese and Meryl acting together—that doesn’t feel compromised at all.
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ColliderJun 10, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Electric with snappy dialogue, visual splendor, and genuinely remarkable performances, Big Little Lies Season 2 is still the sensual, gripping high-camp that we all fell in love with, but a bit older and wiser. It’s slower and quieter, which means it might not capture the water cooler conversationalist and online theorists with the obsessive fervor surrounding the first season, but it also rewards patience with a doubled-down commitment to character drama, complex portraits of female friendship, and often profound meditations on what it means to survive trauma.
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RogerEbert.comJun 7, 2019
Season 2 Review:
While it’s possible in these early episodes to see where Kelley and Moriarty had to pick the stitches sewn at the end of season one to accommodate this unlikely second season, there are enough remarkable distractions—of acting, of direction, of costuming, of music—to make it easy to brush past them and get to the good stuff. It helps when Meryl Streep’s involved. Streep, who joins the cast as Celeste’s (Nicole Kidman) mother-in-law, makes for a seamless addition.
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Jun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Surprisingly, even shockingly, almost everything about season 1 that was overwrought and overdone has been ratcheted down. What was given insufficient exposure—specifically, Laura Dern—has been ratcheted up. And what’s entirely new to the game—namely Meryl Streep—is close to perfection.
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Jun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
“Big Little Lies” continues to offer the sharp, dark-comedic observations that made the first season one of the great thrills of 2017. What it does not offer, in the first three episodes, is an indisputable argument that there is material to power a second season, and maybe more, beyond the memory and repercussions of the first.
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TV Guide MagazineJun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
An ever-watchful Streep lurks on the margins of an irresistible season. The suburban satire has a blunter edge when things fall apart. [10 - 23 Jun 2019, p.9]
Jun 6, 2019
Jun 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
After watching the first three episodes of season two, I’m still not sure I can say that the return of “Big Little Lies” is altogether necessary. But I can say that it promises to be thoroughly enjoyable and smart, with the same conspicuously good acting, the same sharp David E. Kelley writing, and the same spectacular Monterey views that contrast so well with the characters’ dark inner lives.
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The Daily BeastJun 4, 2019
May 31, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Big Little Lies is returning in summer blockbuster season and with Streep in control, the series may be shifting from dark comedy, mystery and commentary on gender politics to full-on actorly action. I might miss the murder mystery a little, but this is more than a good substitute.
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Feb 27, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Generous to its characters, even those who begin as clichés, the series becomes a reflection on trauma; at its best moments, it makes risky observations, especially about the dynamics of domestic abuse. Even when it doesn’t dig so deep, it’s still full of strong performances, including those by a terrific set of child actors.
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Feb 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Everyone has secrets, and, yes, lies. And a lot of Big Little Lies, from the to-kill-for ocean views to the kitchens, constitutes affluence porn. But there's honest emotion here, too, as well as small moments, like an unexpected one between Dern and Woodley late in the series, that help Big Little Lies float above the suds of soapy guilty pleasure.
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Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Big Little Lies could have easily devolved into clichés, like the mean-girl moms in a sitcom. As constructed, though, the story advances at an almost lyrical pace, investing the air kisses and preoccupation with appearances with greater gravity and allowing the characters to gradually develop over the six previewed hours of this seven-episode run.
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Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
There’s a lot of melodramatic threatening. There are heated parent-teacher conferences so baldly unbelievable, you’ll have a hard time deciding which side deserves to be disciplined more. Still, the damn thing is irresistible. The performances crackle, and each of the lead women forges her own brand of indelible unhappiness.
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Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The show could turn out to be soapy or campy, but instead it demonstrates the power and impact of family, community and friendship, how those bonds are just as meaningful and just as dramatic as any grand political or criminal enterprise. It doesn’t need dragons or mobsters or robots to stand as HBO’s best drama in years.
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UPROXXFeb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
While there are definitely stretches where I had flashbacks to Downton Abbey--a show whose execution I admired, but whose substance I rarely enjoyed because I could never bring myself to care about the woes of the landed gentry--the work of the cast and Vallée are strong enough that I could mostly overcome my prejudice against the subject matter and enjoy the craft on display.
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ColliderFeb 16, 2017
Feb 14, 2017
Season 1 Review:
There are times when you get so wrapped up in the private despair and public pettiness of Madeline, Renata, Celeste, Jane & Co. that when the series reminds itself to tend to its crime-puzzle elements, it suddenly seems less special. Big Little Lies is still a must-see because of its extraordinary actors, all of whom bring either new shadings to the sorts of characters they’ve played brilliantly before or show new sides of their talent.
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TV Guide MagazineFeb 9, 2017
Season 1 Review:
It's sensational entertainment for adults eyes' only. [13-26 Feb 2017, p.19]
Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Whatever deeper point is being made here is obscured both by Lies' labored attempts to keep us guessing about the murder and, paradoxically enough, by the same star power that makes it worth watching in the first place. Still, assuming you're willing to sit through yet another story about the sad travails of rich, spoiled people, there is entertainment value to be found in the feuds and the gloss.
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May 31, 2019
Season 2 Review:
All the actors rip into their storylines with the depth we’ve come to expect, and all their characters’ reactions to the events of last season track (Bonnie especially has no reason to trust these women who never offered her the same courtesy before). Nonetheless, the beginning of this season suffers from separating them so much.
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Feb 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The murder looms over the entire series, which spends most of its time establishing motives. ... All of which will, presumably, be eclipsed by the unveiling of who committed murder most foul, and who got fouled. Thank goodness it's all based on a book, or it might have gone on forever.
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Feb 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Lots of times, they would baldly state what they were thinking or feeling, leaving nothing to the imagination, and even 6-year-old children were often deeply aware of their buried psychological motivations. The cast’s performances are good enough to compensate for much of this, but it’s still a bummer to get to the end of a juicy scene and have it conclude with dialogue that’s desperate to sum up everything that preceded it.
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Feb 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
If not a triumphant return to form, Big Little Lies is the best new Kelley series in quite a while. It contains all of his considerable strengths (sharp and clever dialogue) and some his weaknesses (precious and labored moments). It is nothing less than fun, if never much more than that. But that's more than enough to keep you engaged and keep you watching.
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The Daily BeastFeb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Escape for a while into the world of these horrible, vapid people, and let the phenomenal performances by the likes of Kidman, Woodley, Dern, and especially Witherspoon delight and distract you. It’s their respective star turns that keep you from being bored by the otherwise monotonous show--which is a pretty ridiculous detractor for a thriller about a murder.
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Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
In short, Big Little Lies is as glossy and superficially well-packaged as the very community it aims to skewer but ultimately guilty of the same corrosive emptiness. Though highly bingeable and at times bitingly funny, the series is also patently ridiculous and riddled with pernicious stereotypes of henpecked husbands and scheming mean-girl mothers who use their children as pawns.
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Jun 7, 2019
Season 2 Review:
I am of the opinion that season 1 was basically an overly long Lifetime movie with a much more expensive cast. Season 2 has yet to move my position on that, although I will say that David E. Kelley, who pens each episode’s, ahem, teleplays, corrects some of the first season’s nagging stumbles mostly because he has to.
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Jun 3, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Though the three episodes made available to press are enjoyable enough, thanks largely to the cast’s continued strong performances, they’re weighed down by heavy-handed writing and an inchoate grasp of what powered the first season—namely, its subtlety, surprise, and emotional murkiness.
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Feb 16, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Turning the mystery into such a complete MacGuffin as a way to foreground the domestic drama might make sense if that drama were, say, interesting. But the real problem with Big Little Lies is that the women’s stories, however well acted and artfully photographed, are just a compendium of clichés about upper-middle-class angst.
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Feb 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The series might have worked better if it let the strong cast make the most of the troubled writing--good actors can elevate tired scripts and, in reverse, tamp down overly dramatic ones. But that Greek chorus of witnesses that props up the construction of the series undermines their work.
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