Mercy Street

:

Season 1
  • Network: PBS
  • Series Premiere Date: Jan 17, 2016
Season #: 2, 1
User Score
6.1

Generally favorable reviews- based on 43 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 43
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 43
  3. Negative: 13 out of 43
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User Reviews

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  1. jeremyp
    Jan 23, 2016
    6
    This is too weak a show to belong in Masterpiece. The Brits can get away with this yawner, but not the Americans. It just plods along with no interesting characters or plot development. Sort of like "The Knick" without steroids or good acting.
  2. JennetP
    Jan 26, 2016
    4
    A hospital in a Union-held city in the Confederate south near the start of the Civil War: what a great setting for a historical series! Human lives caught in vast political conflicts and changes, pure dramatic gold! Unfortunately the humans on the show aren't very life-like; they're allegorical figures illustrating historical ideas and social themes. E.g. a southern belle, wearing a whiteA hospital in a Union-held city in the Confederate south near the start of the Civil War: what a great setting for a historical series! Human lives caught in vast political conflicts and changes, pure dramatic gold! Unfortunately the humans on the show aren't very life-like; they're allegorical figures illustrating historical ideas and social themes. E.g. a southern belle, wearing a white crinoline dress the size of a parade float, returns to her family's neoclassical mansion to find it full of Union and Confederate wounded. Naive aristocrat . . . lost heritage . . . carnage on BOTH SIDES! I get it! Of course, so would a fourth-grader under anesthesia for a tonsillectomy. By the end of the first episode, my butt ached with all the blows from the Clue Paddle. The few concessions to good storytelling tend toward the melodramatic and improbable. E.g. at the neoclassical mansion, the southern belle finds, out of tens of thousands of Virginia soldiers killed and wounded nearby, her sister's sweetie! Irony chaser: she was actually looking for her own! I'm so disappointed in the writing that I have trouble appreciating anything else. The BBC this ain't.… Expand
  3. shoulderoforion
    Feb 5, 2016
    5
    I gave this a 5 even though I didn't get through the entire first episode, simply too much bloody gore for me to sit back and enjoy the acting, history, or period pieces, looks well produced but after one leg amputation & enough blood being sloshed around to fill a swimming pool I decided this wasn't going to be the series for me.
  4. lesliesimmonds
    Feb 1, 2016
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Very disappointed that this potentially great series is so full of cliches and hackneyed characterization. There is simply nothing original here, and so sophomoric. For example. a barely adolescent boy slave doesn't suddenly decide to become a freeman because he can walk through a gate and join a bunch of free street boys he doesn't know. The historical/psychological reality would be doubt and fear...not an on-the-spot decision. Think of women living in unhappy marriages since the beginning of time; they didn't just suddenly decide, Oh, boy, I'm leaving this marriage and going to be free. It would be terrifying to contemplate and actualize "freedom," because of so much that would be unknown and unfamiliar. How much more thoughtful and compelling if we were to see the complexities of choosing freedom from a situation that may be oppressive, but not abusive. In this drama, so far, there is little or nothing sufficiently complex in plot and characters. Too bad. Can't believe Ridley Scott is involved.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

67
#67 Most Discussed TV Season of 2016

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
61

Generally favorable reviews - based on 19 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 19
  3. Negative: 0 out of 19
  1. Denver Post
    Reviewed by: Joanne Ostrow
    Jan 27, 2016
    50
    Unfortunately the storytelling lacks subtlety. The good and evil characters are too starkly one or the other. The camera tends to flag ideas or objects in advance and make points too obviously.
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  2. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Ellen Gray
    Jan 21, 2016
    60
    Trying to do justice to the stories of abolitionists, freed slaves, Confederate sympathizers, wounded warriors, their harried healers, and history itself is probably a too-tall order for the six episodes PBS envisions as a first season. The series, though, isn't afraid to be entertaining, and it shouldn't have to be.
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  3. The Lincoln Journal Star
    Reviewed by: Jeff Korbelik
    Jan 19, 2016
    75
    If you can get past the sermonizing, there maybe a story worth seeing here.
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