- Network: CBS
- Series Premiere Date: Sep 23, 2013
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Critic Reviews
- Critic score
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Smart, intriguing thriller, but the opener is slightly overheated.
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Both pilots [Hostages and "The Blacklist"] are among broadcast TV's better offerings this fall.
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Hostages piles on twists upon complications upon secrets with enough breathless zeal to keep us wondering what will happen next, even when it challenges our disbelief.
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Things get tense fast in CBS’ new Hostages, and if it can maintain that tension for 13 weeks, the network has a winner.
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It's a dramatic premise that should yield high rewards for Hostages, whose confident pilot episode ends with a cliffhanger worthy of the name--a kind that should bring audiences back lusting for more.
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It’s a pretty great first hour and if they can keep up the suspense before changing direction, it might be a feat worth watching every week.
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If you get past the large leap and buy into the premise, Hostages promises surprising switchbacks and character development ranking among the best of the season.
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Like Spader, Collette is fascinating to watch; there's always so much happening just under the surface.... Show creators Alon Aranya, Omri Givon, Rotem Shamir and Jeffrey Nachmanoff pack the Hostages pilot with a ton of side plots.
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Thanks in large part to the grounded, nuanced performance from Collette, tonight's introduction effectively establishes both the moral dilemma at the heart of the story and the chess match the show intends to follow between Sanders and Carlisle.
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Overstuffed though the pilot is, the show works because of the performances.
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The opener sets this all up smoothly, and Collette, combining a mother's protective instinct with type A pride, is great to watch. [23 Sep 2013]
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It’s well-paced and tightly constructed. Yes, some of it feels overdone and silly.... [But] it ends on a nice turn of events that make me really want to see what happens next.
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The many layers of feints and puzzles are compelling, but it’s hard to see how they can last more than a season or two.
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Hostages has a polished feel to it, and the limited-series approach certainly makes the prospect of committing to the show more palatable, inasmuch as it won’t be able to explain away its central predicament forever.
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If the writing can bring invention to the thriller parts and smarts to the domestic parts, and invention, Hostages could have an indefinite hold on our imagination.
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The twist in the final moments suggests the series already could be catching a case of the stupids, in which case, no cast, no matter how talented, will be able to save this show.
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Despite all its unanswered questions, Hostages is appreciably easier to grasp than NBC’s competing new The Black List, which also gets underway Monday. So for now, it seems worth seeing where this is all going.
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Other than a few other corny ideas (the whole Presidential assassination trope is a little cliché), Hostages delivers a compelling plot with enough tension to keep viewers interested for 45 minutes.
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Hostages unfolds with the crisp efficiency of a humorless event planner checking tasks off a list.
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Sanders' husband (Tate Donovan) and teenaged kids are each shielding their own secrets, uncovered by Carlisle and his crew--and covered up by them as well. Unfortunately, they're fairly pedestrian.
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While the pacing is solid and the direction is competent, nothing rises above the average. The pilot is too tasteful to be intense, and too silly to be affecting. It’s middlebrow to the bone.
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Throughout the pilot, you’ll wonder why this couldn’t all be handled in a mediocre two-hour action movie.
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By pilot's end, the tension level is more "Parenthood" than "Homeland."
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Hostages feels as if it's impulsively running on autopilot, periodically checking off boxes on a laundry list of genre clichés.
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The series does hint at Carlisle's motivation, and maybe the show will get more interesting once his reasons for wanting the president dead are revealed, but the pilot doesn't exactly demand viewers tune in for episode two.
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It is to say that this mimicking is just that, as if the creators here have watched those shows ["24" and "Homeland"], but have no original inspiration, and instead think that plot twists in and of themselves make a drama bracing.
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Ain’t much [Collette] can’t do, so when she temporarily foils Carlisle, we have a pretty good idea who’s going to keep the tables turned on this show.
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Too bad writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff seems blithely unaware of all the situations that tempt us to laugh at the show rather than with it.
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The characters wander a spectrum from boring to irritating (guess which end the two teenage kids wind up on?), and the situation already feels unsustainable by the end of the first episode.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 55 out of 102
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Mixed: 23 out of 102
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Negative: 24 out of 102
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Oct 4, 2013
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Sep 24, 2013
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Jan 12, 2014