Legends
TNT | Release Date: August 13, 2014
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
12
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
NewsdayVerne GayNov 2, 2015
Season 2 Review: Good re-start and better than the real start last season. Read full review
83
NewsdayVerne GayAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: Multiple-personality thriller starts a bit slowly Wednesday night, but early signs still indicate a summer keeper for TNT. Read full review
80
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniNov 2, 2015
Season 2 Review: The reinvented Legends is a maddening puzzle. It's exhausting. But also thrilling.... Somehow, at the end of each episode, the pieces fit together and make sense--only to raise new questions. Fans of spy yarns will lap up every second. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: [Martin's] got his own troubles, and at least up front they make for some engaging television. Read full review
80
The OregonianKristi TurnquistAug 8, 2014
Season 1 Review: Legends, which is based on a novel by Robert Littell and produced by a team that includes "Homeland" veterans Howard Gordon and Alexander Cary, has an unusual sense of melancholy, which seems to emanate from Bean's soulful performance. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchGail PenningtonAug 11, 2014
Season 1 Review: In the early going, the series works best as sort of a modern-day “Mission: Impossible,” and could actually use more of that show’s caper elements. Read full review
70
VarietyBrian LowryOct 28, 2015
Season 2 Review: Viewers are pretty quickly drawn into the two-tiered plot, in a manner that goes beyond just admiring Bean’s verbal calisthenics as he flits from one accent to the next. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf SmithAug 15, 2014
Season 1 Review: When it isn't outlandish, it has a more seriously entertaining side in the mystery of a hooded man who was mortally wounded while trying to tell Martin that even his identity as Martin is not real. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamaraAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: The 10-episode series, based on a book by Robert Littell and premiering Wednesday, has been constructed as a wide and solid if somewhat workmanlike platform for the British actor's considerable talents. Read full review
70
Kansas City StarSara SmithAug 11, 2014
Season 1 Review: It’s a pleasure to watch Bean fall into his “legends,” or fake identities, even as the show pushes the boundaries of what TV audiences might accept when it comes to instantaneous computer heroics. Read full review
70
Denver PostJoanne OstrowAug 11, 2014
Season 1 Review: It's all a fairly standard spy-thriller template, but the cast and crew give Legends an edge. Trust Howard Gordon ("Homeland," "24") and company to devise a well-plotted mystery. Read full review
67
Uncle BarkyEd BarkAug 12, 2014
Season 1 Review: Legends is too pockmarked with standard issue dialogue and situations to merit any awards for the series as a whole. But Bean, who this time is assured of staying vertical, might have enough pop in his performance to break on through. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyJeff JensenAug 7, 2014
Season 1 Review: The high concept is poorly served by a conventional, lazily executed case-of-the-week structure. The show is exec-produced by Howard Gordon of 24 and Homeland fame, and if only he had brought his A game the way his star brought his, Legends could be more memorable. Read full review
67
Washington PostHank StueverJul 29, 2014
Season 1 Review: He may not even know his real identity, which is what makes him so good at taking on imaginary aliases. From there, the show seems a bit predictably structured, but Bean lends a strong and complex presence to the idea. Read full review
63
RedEyeCurt WagnerAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: [Bean's] nearly the only reason to watch this retread mashup of team-based crime/spy shows and the "Bourne" films. Read full review
63
New York PostRobert RorkeAug 11, 2014
Season 1 Review: Maybe Legends will get better, but if TNT expects Bean to carry this show, they’re going to have to give him better villains and better back-up support. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: It's no fault of Bean's, who is riveting as he occasionally morphs into character before his colleagues' amazed eyes. The rest of the series could use a personality transplant. Read full review
60
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoAug 12, 2014
Season 1 Review: If you can get past the clichéd writing and appreciate Legends as a force of sheer cast magnetism and hyperactive camera tricks, it’s a solid distraction from the problems of the real world. Read full review
60
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenAug 12, 2014
Season 1 Review: Darker and less escapist than TNT’s other new summer entry, “The Last Ship,” Legends offers a down-and-dirty hero with rough edges but surrounds him with a cadre of cleaner, less sullied colleagues, making for somewhat of a tonal mish-mash. Read full review
60
VarietyBrian LowryAug 12, 2014
Season 1 Review: To its credit, Legends goes a bit beyond the expected stings, as a shadowy figure prompts Martin to doubt everything he knows and question whom he can trust. For the most part, though, almost everything here feels culled from earlier variations on this theme. Read full review
58
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: The outlook for his head and neck here is much better; Legends, though, is on wobbly legs. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTim GoodmanAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: And yet, after watching the first two episodes, it's a shame that Legends (and TNT) weren't a bit more ambitious with the show. The pilot is splashy and action-packed, but overall the lack of complexity--and yes, I know I cited that as a plus earlier--makes it less satisfying. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerDavid HiltbrandAug 12, 2014
Season 1 Review: The show is off to a rocky start, but there's the chance each week that it might redeem itself because a well-tailored script could rectify most of its issues. Read full review
50
The Lincoln Journal StarJeff KorbelikAug 11, 2014
Season 1 Review: The story sort of has a “Bourne Identity” element to it. The pilot is an eye-roller, with the main storyline featuring Bean infiltrating a survivalist camp. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandAug 11, 2014
Season 1 Review: The potential of that longer story arc, as well as having Bean back on screen with his head reattached to his torso, may be enough to make Legends work despite the familiarity of that crime-solving-team template. Read full review
42
HitfixAlan SepinwallAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: Legends wants you to take it very seriously, but throughout the two episodes I've seen, it plays like a parody of the kind of show it wants to be. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Matt Zoller SeitzAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: Legends makes a grand show of setting up a tortuous, vaguely Don Draper–like interior journey for our lone-wolf hero--in the pilot, he's stalked by a shadowy figure who intimates that Martin doesn't know all there is to know about his true self--but the character is such a pile of overworked cop-show and spy-show elements (he's in too deep, he's a cranky and sarcastic maverick who resents authority, his work destroyed his marriage, etc.), that there's not much to him beyond the charisma that Bean naturally brings. Read full review
40
Boston GlobeMatthew GilbertAug 13, 2014
Season 1 Review: The show could have been a fascinating dissection of self and Bean’s performance could have been tied to something expansive. But Legends is knee-deep at best, relying on feeble plots of the week and high-tech wizardry that borders on the unintentionally comic. The supporting cast is as shallow as Bean is deep. Read full review
30
The New York TimesMike HaleAug 12, 2014
Season 1 Review: Presumably Legends is meant to seem more serious than those shows ["Rizzoli & Isles" and "Major Crimes"] and skew more male in its viewership, but it succeeds only in being more mechanical, predictable and thin. Read full review
30
Cleveland Plain DealerMark DawidziakAug 7, 2014
Season 1 Review: Obvious similarities to the Jason Bourne films and other espionage stories are only part of the derivative drama's problems. The lurching plot turns are preposterous. The supporting characters are thinly drawn. The structure is terribly disjointed. And the dialogue ranges from ham-fisted to stilted. Read full review
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