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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
11
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Dec 13, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It's not something one expects to binge breathlessly in a weekend. But this gripping adaptation, developed and exec produced by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), expands Butler's groundbreaking exploration of America's racist history into a profound puzzle-box thriller. ... Newcomer Johnson is absolutely mesmerizing as Dana.
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Dec 21, 2022
Dec 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
In all, "Kindred" is a reasonable, economic realization of Butler's classic story grounded by Johnson's naturalistic and potent performance, one whose strengths compensate for the strange lack of chemistry with Stock – who does a fine job, don't get us wrong. ... They work well enough to keep the audience invested in their unexpected journey, even at its most harrowing, as well as buying our interest in the possibility of continuing beyond eight episodes.
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Dec 8, 2022
Season 1 Review:
FX’s long-awaited Kindred doesn’t quite dazzle in the same way that the very best recent novel-to-TV adaptations have done. ... But this series does, for the most part, do justice to the metaphor at the center of Butler’s masterpiece. That’s another way of saying that you shouldn’t miss it. ... When Kindred really achieves excellence, it’s usually through Johnson’s extraordinary performance.
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Dec 8, 2022
Season 1 Review:
“Kindred” is a sharp exploration of history, national and personal. ... Johnson makes the character so vivid that the complications around her can at times feel ancillary. It’s in Dana’s relationship with the worlds around her, old and new, that the show feels most alive.
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Dec 13, 2022
Dec 8, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Kindred's first season is thematically rich but narratively sluggish. Yet, like the soap operas Dana adores, it ends on a cliffhanger that makes it hard not to wonder what happens next, and there's enough promise in these episodes to hope the story doesn't end here.
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Dec 13, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Kindred never manages to improve after its intriguing pilot, one that promised a compelling mystery and plenty of tense moments. Instead, the focus is on ancillary characters that are not only obnoxious but lifeless as well, and spends the bulk of the story down on the plantation. Ultimately, this is a mystery that I won’t be returning to find out the answers to.
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Dec 14, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The time jump [from 1976 in the book to the show's 2016] may rankle purists, but it’s hard to imagine that an author as prescient as Butler, who died in 2006, wouldn’t appreciate such an update. ... “Kindred” takes other detours that don’t pay off as well in the first season. ... The series weaves in a thread aligning the 19th-century patrolmen who gleefully round up runaways with modern-day police forces, a comparison Butler explored much more subtly in her book.
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Dec 13, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The character work, the chemistry between Johnson and Stock, and the sense of creeping dread that comes from her brief journeys to the plantation are all very effective early on — almost too effective. Once the season evolves from toggling back and forth between the two eras and devotes itself to a few extended stays in 1815, Kindred quickly begins to drag, as if it doesn’t want to be in this time and place any more than Dana or Kevin initially do.
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Dec 12, 2022
Dec 9, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It’s a credit to showrunner Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins that the whole thing doesn’t collapse under the weight of its premise. That said, the project does betray the telltale stress marks of trying to make Butler’s complicated book fit a serialized TV framework, relying on cliffhangers to the point of exhaustion.
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Dec 8, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The decision to shy away from fetishized violence will help viewers with no interest in another stylized depiction of trauma and it probably makes the parallels between 1800s and 2016 more unsettling and relatable, but it lowers the overall stakes in ways that are confusing and a little disappointing.
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RogerEbert.comDec 13, 2022
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