How to Get Away With Murder

Smart, slick and sexy.

The pilot is ingenious but at moments maybe a little too smart for its own good.

It’s not perfect, but it’s never boring.

The heightened tone, pungent dialogue, extreme characters, twisty plotting and dizzying pace reflect the Shonda philosophy of entertain-at-all-costs, providing a sizzling showcase for Viola Davis as Annalise Keating

With admirable economy and keep-up-people pace, creator Peter Nowalk reveals both the imperial nature of his lead and quick sketches of the five students from the opening scene.

It actually improves upon the successful formula by downplaying any romantic entanglements, which, at times, have weighed down the leads of Rhimes's other shows.

How to Get Away with Murder screams "Shondaland" through and through, a sudsy primetime potboiler rooted in a belief that the experience of adulthood can be just as sexy as the bloom of youth.

A few minutes in, and you can sense a promise of sex, surprises, and a healthy dose of fun. And so far, the show delivers.

While it’s so fast paced, you barely realize that it isn’t always credible, you do get that it’s always fun.

Davis is overqualified for the material, and, yet, like Kerry Washington before her, she brings an added dimension to the part of an intimidating yet vulnerable woman. Meanwhile, through the hammy uses of flash-forwarding, it’s barely any time at all before Annalise’s ambitious students are tasked with covering up their own homicidal tendencies.

The law students are an assortment of not yet very distinctive ambitious types, with the exception being audience surrogate Wes Gibbons (Alfred Enoch)

While Keating is immediately a compelling character, it is unfortunate that so much of the pilot episode requires the viewer to suspend disbelief, starting with the idea that a top-notch defense attorney would allow a class of newbie law students unfettered access to all documents in a case that she is currently defending.

How to Get Away with Murder is not by any stretch transcendent TV but it is great, gonzo fun, a breakneck-paced, well-made prime-time soap that, if future episodes are as entertaining as the pilot, may easily become viewers’ new TV addiction.

Davis is such a phenomenal actress that it’s tempting and easy to say that she’s better than the material she’s given here, but hopefully she can elevate the show around to her level. She does so often enough in the premiere that I’m willing to see if she can keep it up.

Davis goes all Sasha Fierce on the role. In fact, her potent performance nearly overwhelms the show, something that rarely happens on TV. She certainly makes the younger contingent of the cast fade into the woodwork.

A tedious flash-forward, flashback structure involving the students doing something that looks very, very bad in the woods hints that "Scandal"-style plot craziness may be right around the corner. [But] It's worth tuning in to see Davis display her versatility in the kind of multi-dimensional, non-stereotypical lead role she hasn't had an opportunity to play in movies.

In the moments when Annalise is plotting strategy with her underlings, or pulling one shady trick after another in open court, are a treat because Davis is there to carry it all.... The [other] characters involved are so much less compelling than Annalise that it feels like a magic trick gone awry.

How to Get Away with Murder is no “Good Wife” in the sophistication (or writing) departments, and when key turning points in the case involve witnesses who are color blind, you just want to Skype with Jessica Fletcher from “Murder, She Wrote” to wrap this one up.

The show would benefit from easing up on the frenetic pace, taking a breath every now and then, and making its younger cast members seem like they’re actually in law school, not an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

The show is fast-paced and unpretentious, and it finds clever ways to deliver exposition that might otherwise be tedious.... [But] It often tries too hard to wow us, when it might have been better off just telling its story and developing its characters.

For now, it appears to be a whodunit told in flashbacks and an ensemble drama whose ensemble has yet to fully emerge from Davis' formidable shadow.

Perhaps inevitably, with so much going on, the law students sort of blend together in the pilot (a few weeks after watching the premiere, it was difficult to remember who did what), while Davis’ scenes quickly expose sides of Keating that suggest there’s far more to her than meets the eye.

It's all a little pell-mell, but it just about holds together and Viola Davis is ferocious in the lead role.

Murder jumps around a lot, to the point where it’s perhaps too much.

It’s straining to be TV’s new obsession, instead of a riveting drama.

[Davis'] performance is riveting; you can't take your eyes off this powerful creature when she's on the screen. Alas, the students aren't nearly as compelling.... When the action shifts to them, the drama suffers.

The series manages to maintain a certain melodramatic tension, at least from the evidence of the pilot, but it could be hard to overcome the sledgehammer cynicism and mess of nefarious plot turns.

Davis is riveting throughout.... Unfortunately, Murder has a number of flaws.