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Critic Reviews
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The first two episodes effectively set up the larger conflict that’s brewing, but they also revel in the colorful cast.
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It’s admirably lighthearted, and much more kinetic than the typical period piece. The show’s largely played for dramedy and candy-colored history, all pastel set design and elaborate costumes that make everyone look like the Bride of Bowie Frankenstein. But the cheerful casualness defies a tough, battle-hardened heart.
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Any potential discomfort one may have with the subject is soon overwhelmed by the spirited intelligence and sharp style with which this series is executed.
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It sometimes feels structured more like a British soap opera than a prestige-TV miniseries. But it’s fun nevertheless to engage with the characters of Harlots, who are vividly written, outspoken, and frank.
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It’s a bawdy, funny, gritty, and at times moving drama that flies in the face most of the period costume dramas we’ve seen on TV over the years.
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Harlots is unsparing and sympathetic, able to find humor in its characters’ romps and compassion for the profession’s tragedies.
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Hulu's odd but engrossing new drama about life inside an 18th-century London brothel.
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Harlots, on Hulu, is certainly audacious. And ambitious. But whether it will be able to pull off it’s fine-line feminist balancing act remains to be seen; this show may end up groundbreaking or it may end up a train wreck. In the meantime it’s hard to look away.
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Shocking and fascinating, Harlots will keep you watching not for the sex and nudity but for the women trying not to sell their souls along with their bodies.
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The script is evocative of Fielding’s “Tom Jones, a Foundling” (1749) or Defoe’s “Moll Flanders” (1722), and the performances are sublime. Morton and Manville make engaging adversaries--rather like 18th century versions of “Dynasty’s” Alexis and Krystle.
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Forgive the salacious hook for a show that is not so much titillating as it is gripping, surprising, at times humorous and even a bit thought-provoking when it comes to exploring how sex is just as valuable as money or power.
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Harlots tends to teeter between being a lark and a social tract. The flesh is willing throughout, but the structure can be a little weak. Still, this is a decidedly different and bracing look at ye olde England, with power struggles aplenty as women strive to assert themselves while men mostly just want to insert themselves.
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In spite of its flaws, Harlots is far more addictive and even thoughtful than I initially gave it credit for. It doesn’t shy away from its characters’ more morally horrifying choices, nor the devastating circumstances that led them there.
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An engaging new period melodrama.
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The show’s creators--the accomplished and ambitious playwright and screenwriter Moira Buffini and the actress Alison Newman--set an unflagging pace in the two episodes available for review, with dialogue that’s sufficiently crisp and performances that are entertaining enough to keep you interested, even if the story feels a little hollow at the core.
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What the series does best is make smaller characters from both brothels emerge as fully fledged people in short order. ... Where Harlots struggles more is in trying to balance this portrait of a grittier world with the show's penchant for wanting things a bit snappier and more modern.
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There’s a hesitancy to confront the thicket of conflicting emotions that are being hinted at underneath the not-so-charmed life of the Wells girls and the women they work with (or against) but the origins and the precariousness of these feelings never quite explored with any daring or seriousness. ...There is the constant use of the titular term, which rips you out of the action without care whenever it’s hurled about, but that’s not half as annoying as the music.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 20 out of 36
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Mixed: 4 out of 36
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Negative: 12 out of 36
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Apr 5, 2017
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Apr 3, 2017
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May 7, 2017