- Network: Prime Video
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 11, 2022
Critic Reviews
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It isn’t until the end that the show’s full vision is discernible. ... The show’s various pieces manage to be pretty intriguing. ... Whatever you think of Corden, his performance as Jamie is superb: largely sympathetic, with grace notes of weaseliness and spite.
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A quality comedy-drama which never loses an element of surprise. The episodes are half an hour at most, and each is a treat. Corden’s performance carries the whole thing.
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A strange and very writerly and theatrical little show that hails, fittingly enough, from acclaimed playwright Jez Butterworth (The Ferryman). That Mammals perhaps could have worked as well or better as a two-hour stage show, rather than in six, half-hour-ish installments, is a thoroughly worthy complaint. But after wondering at the purpose of the whole thing through its opening episodes, I quite enjoyed how its callbacks and bits of artificial structuring paid off.
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As for what it all ends up saying about modern relationships, it is more than messy in a way that it doesn’t fully pull together. Still, for all the ways Mammals bites off more than it can chew, the overall meal is worth sitting down for to observe who the fellow diners at the table of life truly are.
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Kreiling is sufficiently inscrutable as Amandine, one of those gorgeous, stubbornly mysterious seductresses that screenwriters can't seem to resist. Jamie is the kind of cuddly everybloke Corden excels at, though the comedian also exposes the core of his character's heartbreak with intriguing intensity. Alas, by the final half hour, there is little sympathy to go around for Jamie or any of the primary mammals in Mammals.