|
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
15
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
|
Watch Now
Critic Reviews
Season 1 Review:
Showrunners Carlton Cuse (“Lost,” the “Jack Ryan” TV series ) and John Ridley (Oscar-winning writer of “12 Years a Slave” and creator of the series “American Crime”) have crafted a thought-provoking series with traditional plot and framing devices that lay out events in clear fashion, with the ensemble cast—led by Vera Farmiga in one of her finest roles—turning in resonant work.
Read full review
RogerEbert.comAug 11, 2022
Season 1 Review:
I do not recommend binging it for anyone’s emotional stability—even those first three could be rough in one sitting—but this is rewarding dramatic television, the kind of show that takes history from the page and brings it to life, honoring both the dead and the people traumatized by Mother Nature and bureaucratic incompetence.
Read full review
ColliderAug 1, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Five Days at Memorial is an important but extremely frustrating watch, I suspect by design. ... Five Days at Memorial urges you to put yourself in the shoes of the survivors and victims. And it demands that we examine the systems that are meant to serve us in a crisis so that something like this never happens again.
Read full review
The GuardianAug 12, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It is utterly brutal and utterly compelling. This is at a slight cost to character delineation and development. Every performance (especially Vera Farmiga as Dr Anna Pou, Julie Ann Emery as nurse Diane Robichaux and Raven Dauda as the daughter eventually forced to abandon her dying mother) is quietly brilliant, but their situations are so unrelentingly terrible that they inevitably become slightly emblematic rather than individualised figures.
Read full review
Season 1 Review:
While often gripping, the series, covering a nearly two-year time span, is not the propulsive “ER”-style experience promised by the trailer. The first five episodes, broken down neatly by Day One, Day Two etc., constitute a stark drama of waiting. ... Later episodes of “Five Days at Memorial” favor spooky, vaguely Expressionistic flashbacks where we learn what really went down. They’re a bit much.
Read full review
IndieWireAug 12, 2022
Season 1 Review:
There’s a way that highlighting valor can often be used to paper over severe shortcomings in a time of crisis. This series, though inelegant at times, avoids that trap by embracing the messiness required to put those choices and mistakes into perspective. Though “Five Days at Memorial” certainly doesn’t shy away from the grimness of a hospital slowly losing its resources and being effectively cut off from the outside world, its strongest insights are into the idea of institutional collapse.
Read full review
Season 1 Review:
The show leaves it up to the viewer to decide. Who’s guilty and of what — murder? being human? — isn’t so much left ambiguous as attributed to the mystery of how our different minds work. That’s not conventionally satisfying when widespread government, corporate and individual mishandling led to so much death and destruction. But it may be the most honest answer to why people do what they do when the levee breaks.
Read full review
Season 1 Review:
The series is well-made and often hard to watch.. ... Spread out over a longer time, the final three episodes, in which investigators Arthur “Butch” Schafer (Michael Gaston) and Virginia Rider (Molly Hager) build a case against Pou and two nurses, are less compelling.
Read full review
Season 1 Review:
There’s a lean drama miniseries in here mixed with a disaster film, a superfluous love story, and a police investigation. But high-highs and low-lows make it come across confused when it should feel necessary. Five Days at Memorial is an important story that deserved better.
Read full review
Season 1 Review:
Ms. Farmiga is always good, but several of the cast, given banal and obvious things to say, can be as wearying as the deluge of emergencies beleaguering the hospital, not all of them caused by the hurricane itself. ... What's genuinely impressive—and even instructive—are the computer-generated visuals.
Read full review
Current TV Shows
By MetascoreBy User Score













