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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
10
Mixed:
10
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
ColliderApr 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Love & Death is a standout in part because it's willing to wade into the emotional disarray, but it also rests chiefly on the shoulders of a leading actor capable of capturing all the complexities of David E. Kelley's scripts and Lesli Linka Glatter's direction. Put another way: Love & Death wouldn't be half as riveting without Elizabeth Olsen to bind it all together.
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The PlaylistApr 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Although it’s skillfully shot and exquisitely acted, it presents the facts as they were laid out by those involved with very little editorialization beyond the basic dramatization required of the medium. This may deter viewers who are more used to the salacious tone in which these kinds of stories are often told. It comes down to whether you like your true crime with or without the pulp.
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Season 1 Review:
Aside from a layered performance by Olsen that easily surpasses the wig-forward acting of Candy’s miscast Jessica Biel, what sets Love & Death apart from its predecessor, and so many other superficial, ripped-from-the-headlines murder shows (Dahmer—Monster, The Thing About Pam, The Serpent), is Kelley’s refusal to reduce real people to cartoon killers or weirdos or fools.
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The Mercury NewsApr 27, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Elizabeth Olsen’s measured performance as Candy makes it difficult to penetrate her psyche, though we see glimpses of her tightly wound persona from time to time. Still, “Love & Death” rarely goes beyond a filmed timeline of events that are all too familiar to us by now.
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Season 1 Review:
While Love & Death works overtime to present Candy sympathetically—we see how frustrated and trapped she feels in a life that offers her little but ever-increasing expectations about who she should be and what she should do—her victim, Betty, isn’t offered anywhere close to the same depth or interiority.
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The Observer (UK)Sep 10, 2024
The GuardianSep 7, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Ultimately, “Love & Death” has the credentials, performances and production values to elevate the story above the leering exploitation that marks the worst of the field. ... But at the end of the day, “Love & Death” does turn real people into exaggerated, if empathetically rendered, versions of themselves.
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The Daily BeastApr 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The show seems most alive in dealing with Candy and Allan’s affair, as if the killing is the thing that got a greenlight, but not something worth exploring in great depth. Whether you know the story from previous articles and dramatizations, or it’s brand-new to you, Love & Death never really justifies why all these talented people have come together to re-create this particular crime.
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Season 1 Review:
Olsen works hard to imbue her character with more nuance as the strain of events begins to grind Candy down. But the series itself seems content simply to recreate the events of her case rather than explore them in any deeper psychological or thematic fashion. After seven hours, we end up with no more insight into what happened on that fateful day in Wylie, Texas than if we had just stuck to the Wikipedia page.
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Season 1 Review:
Love & Death is at its best when it’s using the framing of a sensational true-crime case to explore more general human experience: malaise, transgression, the stifle of social order. ... After Betty’s death, though, the series loses its way. What had once been a finely tuned character study becomes wooden and formulaic. ... Love & Death ultimately has no argument, no salient reason to exist beyond the titillation it wisely avoids in its first few episodes.
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IndieWireApr 20, 2023
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