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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
29
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Refreshingly original and unusual, an all-too-rare drama that will keep you guessing about the outcome of an episode until the last few minutes. In brief, it's TV's most interesting and compelling -- and therefore the best -- new show of the fall. [29 Sept 2002, p.T6]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
This requires some patience at first, although getting a handle on the format is relatively painless. Once that's accomplished, it's thrilling to watch Boomtown navigate twists and turns like a topflight Grand Prix racer. [29 Sept 2002, p.3]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The season's best new drama introduces a smart ensemble and immerses us in a tangle of conflicting viewpoints. The storytelling device, which occasionally backtracks in time, isn't distracting or forced. [29 Sept 2002, p.F-02]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
There's no contest for the outstanding new series this fall. NBC's Boomtown looms over the competition like a giant surrounded by mostly pygmies. [29 Sept 2002, p.4]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
With Boomtown, you are likely to feel a much stronger emotional investment than with lesser crime dramas. In the final moments of the premiere, the drama reaches a level that is almost poetically tragic and terribly haunting...Ambitious, artful and sometimes ingenious, Boomtown is the best and least compromised new network drama series since "ER," and in its own way, just as much of a breakthrough. [28 Sept 2002, p.C01]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's messy and confusing, often complex and contradictory, and moves in fits and starts, sideways and backward. It's the most startlingly original program on television in years, maybe ever, and it's also one of the best. [28 Sept 2002, p.E1]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
While there is no shortage of narrative theorists who talk about detective fiction as being most successful when it is like a puzzle, no one on network television has ever managed to create a series that could make viewers feel as if they were actually putting together a puzzle piece by piece as they watched. Perhaps the nearest anyone came was the writing team of Richard Levinson and William Link with their pilot for Peter Falk's Columbo, but Boomtown is light years beyond what Levinson and Link were doing in the 1970s. [28 Sept 2002, p.1D]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
HBO shows aside, visceral Boomtown is the new exemplar of quality TV dramas on Sunday night... Boomtown engrosses. It's the season's strongest new drama, not just because it takes a chance on a novel format, but because it manages to tell stand-alone stories even as it develops the characters in its large ensemble. [27 Sept 2002, p.40]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Man, is this a good show...Boomtown is so good, it single-handedly restores your faith in broadcast networks. They can compete with the "freedom" of premium cable. All it takes is creative smarts. And NBC's Boomtown has plenty of those. [27 Sept 2002, p.B02]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
TV's best new drama. [27 Sept 2002]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Boomtown offers hope that it could be one of those rare shows that looks sharp, is sharp and actually has something to say...In lesser hands, it could have been hackneyed or pretentious. But creator Graham Yost is a skilled writer who handles the shifting perspectives and the time jumps with aplomb and without sacrificing characterization. [27 Sept 2002, p.SE1]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Stylish and briskly paced, Boomtown clearly shows the impact of "Pulp Fiction" in its quirky dialogue. The impact of "Rashomon," Kurosawa's film about a murder recounted in different ways, is most obviously seen in the program's structure. [29 Sept 2002, p.J1]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Gripping.
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
In a more refreshing fantasy, Boomtown's L.A. appears to be almost a one-medium town. In early episodes, at least, there are no local TV pests to harass Little and her publication, who have the news all to themselves. Which is one more reason why some of us think so highly of this series. [28 Sept 2002, p.C1]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
What makes Boomtown so immediately interesting is that each
of these people is treated like a main character, at least for a few
moments. Rather than the standard objective, all-seeing-all-knowing
camera, this show teases the viewer by using several highly
subjective cameras, including some trained on bit players. I've seen
this verite approach in documentaries, but this is the closest any
fictional drama has come to approximating the effect. [28 Sept 2002, p.G1]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
In a season overstuffed with crime dramas, Boomtown is one of the two or three best, alongside CBS' "Without a Trace" and "Robbery Homicide Division." It has complex, compelling characters, a terrific cast of actors and a beautiful feature film look. But it would have all those things even if the stories were told in strict chronological order. [27 Sept 2002, p.53]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
And what makes Yost's script even more amazing is that this is not just a show about crime, but it's a show about the characters as well. In the hourlong pilot, we get glimpses into each of their lives and begin to see how who they are affects what they do. [27 Sept 2002, p.C08]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Boomtown, created by Graham Yost, who wrote "Band of Brothers" and "Speed," has the potential to be NBC's best crime drama since "Homicide: Life on the Street." [27 Sept 2002]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Donnie Wahlberg, Neal McDonough, Jason Gedrick, Mykelti Williamson, Nina Garbiras, Gary Basaraba and Lana Parilla elevate this cop show into something that would be fairly interesting even without the "Pulp Fiction"/"Rashomon"-esque technique of telling stories from a variety of perspectives and in a non-linear time line. It's not entirely clear that this gimmick makes the stories better or more interesting, but it does make them unique. [27 Sept 2002, p.49]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Donnie Wahlberg stands out among this excellent cast, as a thoughtful, sharp detective with a secret sorrow eating up his home life. [27 Sept 2002, p.17]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Boomtown stumbles when it adopts an occasional sanctimonious tone. And, like most cop shows, it contains liberal doses of violence and the ubiquitous sexually depraved perp. But Boomtown also is an impressive accomplishment in editing that will keep you hanging on until the final scene. [29 Sept 2002, p.55]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's a nonlinear way to approach a drama series, but that's what makes it so gripping. [27 Sept 2002, p.134]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Strangely theatrical and disappointingly hollow. [29 Sept 2002, p.H03]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
In the first two episodes provided for preview, the formula gets the plot across with minimal confusion, although you wonder at times if all the time-shifting and multiple storytelling is really necessary...Well, maybe. Because if this show gave it to you straight, it would run the risk of becoming just another violent L.A. cop show.
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