Containment

While none of these actors are household names, all are convincing, believable and engaging. ... This is one of those series that will make you ask yourself what you would do in a similar situation. It might lead to some uncomfortable moments, but Containment sure does make for entertaining television.

Containment may not be the CW’s answer to “Downton Abbey,” but it’s a very well-made, well-written and well-acted thriller that will keep you guessing about everything except for the quality of the series.

Although the dialogue is occasionally a bit cute, the rest of the cast comes across as mostly solid and believable.

However derivative Containment may be, it attains a certain creepy power as it rolls along its yuckily apocalyptic way.

None of this qualifies as breezy spring/summertime entertainment. Still, if apocalyptic drama is your entertainment of choice, then Containment might well keep you contented.

Although Containment may be convincing, it isn’t particularly compelling, because the characters seldom register as anything other than pawns--most of them sacrificial.

The story’s fine. It’s just filled with a bunch of overacting and poorly orchestrated scenes.

What happens to people when [insert fear here] strikes is the plot for every disaster movie ever. Containment, serviceably if not excitingly adapted by Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) from Cordon, a Belgian series, isn't out to reinvent the genre, even as it extends it to 13 episodes.

Its first episode raises some chills--those initial moments of realization during an outbreak always do--but as the series progresses it increasingly seems assembled from characters and plot threads that we’ve seen repeatedly.

A multi-character drama, Containment is fine but unexceptional.

It’s a series without interesting characters, story or a modicum of tension.

Undemanding viewers (not a judgment) may find Containment diverting nonetheless. If nothing here seems the least real, the series' flaws, from its underpowered budget to its overripe dialogue, are those of innumerable, sometimes beloved B-, C- and D-grade pictures before it — not excluding the high-toned epigrams, from Socrates and Matthew and such that introduce each episode with a sheen of classy meaning.

Containment has a reasonably suspenseful pilot as directed by David Nutter (Game of Thrones, The X-Files). But as the series proceeds, it just becomes more repetitive and tedious.

The CW's Containment is an occasionally terrifying, mostly formulaic tribute to the primal unease that comes from watching somebody coughing up blood.

Something like this has to be gripping, and Containment is anything but.

While the too-rare action sequences can be thrilling--as when meth heads lay siege to Jana’s office hoping to score some chemicals to huff--such instances aren’t enough to inoculate viewers against the deadly dull.

A thoroughly uninspired drama about a pandemic.

The acting is underwhelming all around with the exception of Gyasi, who only seems limited by what’s on the page.