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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
8
Mixed:
15
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Apr 24, 2020
Season 1 Review:
From the get-go, Defending Jacob grabs and holds your attention, hour after hour, as you try to figure out whether the kid did it, and if the parents are going to make it through the trial without imploding. .... It’s the best Apple original series yet, and proof that like fine wine, some stories just need time to age and breathe a little.
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Apr 20, 2020
Season 1 Review:
“Defending Jacob” is fairly straightforward. It has a murder. It has a suspect. It has a trial. And then it starts sprinkling in reasonable doubt. If there’s a greater lesson to be learned, we missed it. ... Thanks to a great score and lingering cinematography, “Defending Jacob” is good. It just seems supersized to justify a film star showing up on television.
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Apr 17, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It is thanks to its narrow, altogether gripping—if also frequently suffocating—clinical focus on the inner lives of its subjects that we come to know the Barber family of Massachusetts. ... The portrayal of this devoted couple is far from convincing. It’s a peculiarly weak aspect of this otherwise strong production.
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ColliderApr 24, 2020
Season 1 Review:
No small thanks to that knockout ensemble, Defending Jacob [is] absorbing for much of its run, though the compelling drama tends to come in fits, surrounded by lulls, side-tangents, and red herrings that too often seem to lead nowhere. In part, it’s obvious that’s because the material simply doesn’t fill an eight-episode run, at least not as it was adapted.
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Apr 23, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s an ambitious attempt to combine a mystery with a faulty-parenting drama. ... It all goes on too long, though. Part of the problem is repetition. ... The series has a consistent tone of somber deliberation that might just be Tyldum’s style but plays as a way to hold together a story that’s been stretched too far. “Defending Jacob” has great ingredients, but the portion size is off.
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Apr 23, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Chris Evans might not have a shield in Defending Jacob, but the eight-part miniseries -- based on a bestselling novel -- is all about shielding his son. Well cast and twisty, it's an earnest if mostly undistinguished effort, one that relies heavily on the one-time Avenger's star power in serving its mission to bring viewers to Apple TV+.
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Apr 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The conventions are so familiar that it's hard to find a single story beat or plot twist or emotional swing in Defending Jacob that doesn't feel utterly stale, elongated to a running time of eight hours not so much for added nuance, but mostly because the kind of two-hour film Defending Jacob would have been. ... That leaves Defending Jacob with a superb cast and solid production values and little to add to the conversation.
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Apr 21, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The eight-part limited series does a good job of making us feel the parents’ uncertainty about whether Jacob is innocent or guilty. But that suspense is made to carry too much of the load for the relaxed pace of the show, which takes its own sweet time drawing us in.
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Apr 13, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The worst thing about Apple TV+'s new limited series Defending Jacob is that it feels like every other crime series we've seen before. ... It is not a terrible show, but without adding anything new to the genre — the fact the main suspect is a teen is as close as it gets — it's also hard to classify it as good.
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IndieWireApr 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
“Defending Jacob” saves up enough drama for the final two episodes to make it feel like a substantive event has taken place — enough that you’ll beg to spoil the ending for your friends just to recap the insanity out loud — but when you break it down into parts, there’s not much there.
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RogerEbert.comApr 24, 2020
Apr 23, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Sluggish and deeply dour miniseries. ... The case for watching “Defending Jacob” is thin indeed, even at this peculiar cultural moment when viewers are willing and able to watch just about anything. Dockery overcomes creator-writer Mark Bomback’s clunksome scripts, once more proving that she has much to offer beyond “Downton,” while Evans’s performance is as weak and uninspired as can be — rivaled in its flatness only by Martell’s empty take on a troubled teen.
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Apr 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Generally, the talent assembled here feels left out to dry:. ... Up to its final moments, this limited series strains for impact. But it’s unserious about the aspects of its story that are genuinely potentially interesting, and — up through a final twist that’s at least audacious — sillier than one might have any reason to expect.
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