DMZ

It’s not hard to imagine this dystopian future, and DMZ offers a compelling story at the heart of the show.

“DMZ” has a striking visual tone, from the dystopian landscapes of burnt-out Manhattan to the color-coordinated interiors that pop with bright shades of blues and oranges and reds. ... Alma rises to a position of prominence in such fast fashion you’ll almost wonder if you skipped an episode, and for all the big-picture stuff taking place inside and outside the DMZ, the confrontations are often intense but pretty small scale.

Dawson offers a through-line to this story that can be a little emotionally broad or not as impactful as its main drama. Alma’s spirit may be one of the many sentimental symbols in this saga, but like the best parts of “DMZ,” it still hits home.

When scenes click, you want the show to be longer, so it can build drama more effectively and realize its premise with proper spectacle. But when those half-developed characters and shortcuts to climactic moments bog down momentum, the solution may have been to trim “DMZ” to feature length. ... Even in its hurried capacity, “DMZ” forms a moving story about minorities fighting for their place in a country that wants to box them in and deaden their spirit.

The actors stretch mightily in their performances to sell the many plot holes that "DMZ" requires us to ignore as we travel with Alma. Other details, including a ticking-down clock in the first episode, have no real purpose at all. Whether the poignant performances and rousing visuals are enough to carry viewers through its inconsistent flow is as tough to say.

“DMZ” feels both too short and too long. It’s too short to build out the world that was needed to make it work and too long to spin its wheels with clunky dialogue about the dynamics between Alma and everyone she encounters for four hours.

It’s a political drama that’s studiedly nonpartisan. Whether that makes the show universal, or too cautious to risk possible future seasons, depends on which side you’re coming from.

A series built around a US civil war is bound to get attention, especially in these polarized times. But "DMZ" merely uses that backdrop as a device to introduce another dystopian drama based on a DC graphic novel, basically "The Walking Dead" meets the '70s artifact "The Warriors." The result is an uninvolving miniseries that, at four parts, feels either too long or not nearly long enough.

Dickerson orchestrates the series’ only memorable action set piece in the third episode, only to follow that up with a “finale” that’s a mixture of artificial conclusions and hopeful set-ups for future adventures in case audiences flock to this series. It’s easy to see how these four episodes might evoke enough curiosity to get viewers in the door, but harder to see how DMZ will keep them watching.