Critic Reviews
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It stretches out over eight episodes, allowing time for Edgar Ramírez’s Macchiarini to seduce not just Miller (played by Mandy Moore), his patients, and his colleagues, but the viewer as well. .... Ramírez and Moore fill the series’ center, but some of the best work here is done on the periphery. Luke Kirby, as dour, skeptical American surgeon Nathan Gamelli, and Gustaf Hammarsten, as shaggy Swedish researcher Dr. Svensson, provide dramatic and ethical ballast to the romantic sizzle.
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The first thing that Dr. Death Season 2 improves on from Season 1 is the writing of its female characters. .... But more than that, Season 2 of Dr. Death gives more space for us to get to know and care about Macchiarini’s patients, which ensures the series plays out like a horror story in several moments.
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Though the series is fine, the timeline feels convoluted as it jolts over the years before Benita and the good doctor connect. Moreover, the most compelling episodes of “Dr. Death” lie in the season’s second half.
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It doesn’t help that episodes follow a haphazard timeline—cities and years keep changing within an installment without sufficient narrative explanations to help fill in the gaps. Despite the drawbacks, Dr. Death succeeds as a real gut-punch because of the affecting stories it tells. Plus, the performances are strong.
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Stitched together, the two halves make for a lumpy, if occasionally gripping, whole.
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Dr. Death gives us little more than this broadly sketched, flatly written foundation for Benita and Paolo’s romance, and leaves the central question — how on earth did an accomplished broadcast journalist fall for such a fabulist? — largely unanswered.