• Network: PBS
  • Series Premiere Date: Jan 17, 2016
Season #: 2, 1
Metascore
61

Generally favorable reviews - based on 19 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 19
  2. Negative: 0 out of 19
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Critic Reviews

  1. Reviewed by: David Wiegand
    Jan 14, 2016
    100
    The script occasionally wanders into “Gone With the Wind”-style melodrama, but is always rescued by excellent performances. Among the best of the bunch are James, Radnor and Winstead. Butz and Summers edge delightfully close to comic relief.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Nina Terrero
    Jan 6, 2016
    91
    Mercy Street sets up a story that's slow-moving but stirring, with rich depiction of the social and cultural shifts taking place across the nation. [8/15 Jan 2016, p.99]
  3. Reviewed by: Mekeisha Madden Toby
    Jan 19, 2016
    80
    Subplots surrounding Green’s southern belle daughters, espionage and PTSD do little to move the series along and would’ve been better shortened or left on the cutting-room floor. That said, such distractions do little to dilute Mercy Street as the imperative Civil War narrative it truly is.
  4. Reviewed by: Jeff Korbelik
    Jan 19, 2016
    75
    If you can get past the sermonizing, there maybe a story worth seeing here.
  5. Reviewed by: Mary McNamara
    Jan 19, 2016
    70
    Overcrowded with plot, character and intent, the production has an earnest theatricality that can be both charming and tedious.
  6. Reviewed by: Daniel Fienberg
    Jan 19, 2016
    70
    Mercy Street delivers on gross-out medicine, tentatively soapy romance and and even occasionally nuanced history lessons and keeps the giggle-inducing performances to a relatively minimum. Six episodes was probably a less-than-ideal count for Lisa Wolfinger and David Zabel's drama, but the run concludes at a place that should take the show interesting places in a hypothetically better arced second season.
  7. Reviewed by: Rob Owen
    Jan 15, 2016
    70
    It’s not so bloody to turn off viewers coming to it from lead-in “Downton Abbey,” but it’s also not so mercenary in its attempts to be compatible that it seems watered down.
  8. Reviewed by: Kristi Turnquist
    Jan 14, 2016
    70
    It would be more exciting if it took more chances. It's an earnest effort, and reminds us that all that compelling stories don't need to be told with an English accent.
  9. Reviewed by: Maureen Ryan
    Jan 13, 2016
    70
    The show can be a little disjointed or didactic, and there are many scenes of doctors confidently using techniques that viewers know to be unhelpful, a conceit that gets old relatively fast.... The more specific Mercy Street gets about individual moral, political and psychological dilemmas, and the more it gives its finest cast members scope to display the more subtle aspects of their craft, the more winning it becomes.
User Score
6.1

Generally favorable reviews- based on 43 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 43
  2. Negative: 13 out of 43
  1. Jan 24, 2016
    2
    I couldn't have been more disappointed. As stunned as I was by the egregiously bad acting and unremitting use of every Civil War cliché theyI couldn't have been more disappointed. As stunned as I was by the egregiously bad acting and unremitting use of every Civil War cliché they could pack into the first episode, even more surprised am I that other reviewers think Mercy Street was any good. Costumes and photography are the only reason I didn't give this a 1. Question: Why did one sister have a southern belle accent and the other did not? Full Review »
  2. Jan 18, 2016
    3
    What a disappointment. Watching "Mercy Street" I felt as though I had fallen into a history/medical/social course 101. The acting is justWhat a disappointment. Watching "Mercy Street" I felt as though I had fallen into a history/medical/social course 101. The acting is just pedestrian as is the writing. Sadly disappointingly boring as I had looked forward to this period drama produced by PBS. I found nothing interesting in the premiere that would get me to watch episode 2. Full Review »
  3. Jan 19, 2016
    1
    My wife and I second shellview's review. This has to be the worst pbs series we have seen in years. Its like they had checklist to goMy wife and I second shellview's review. This has to be the worst pbs series we have seen in years. Its like they had checklist to go through with speeches perfectly placed at each strategic point. Wooden acting and dialogue. Hey my wife has been a nurse of 35 years and she was the first to give it a thumbs down. Full Review »