Defending Jacob

Approached as a crime drama, Defending Jacob might seem a little slow and underbaked, but as an ensemble character piece it hits the mark.

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.

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+.

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.

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.

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.

The story never lingers long enough at home for the family drama to really take hold. ... The result is a story that feels both overstuffed and underdeveloped. Like its namesake, Defending Jacob is brought down just as it’s taking off.

“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.

This is perhaps the rare mini-series that should have been a movie, rather than the other way around. All the good is packed in at the end, and it takes seven lugubrious hours to get there.

Defending Jacob is not bad so much as the result of what happens when you try to reverse-engineer a bestseller into a conversation-starter, and prestige-TV it to death.

“Defending Jacob” should be a show about the impact of a murder investigation on parents who thought their lives were totally normal, but by keeping us in the dark, it feels more like a game, a cheap Lifetime mystery ... only four times as long.

“Defending Jacob” is a measured and duplicative story that feels like a collection of clips from other well-produced, but ultimately forgettable, crime narratives.

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.