One Child
Sundance | Sundance Channel | Release Date: December 5, 2014
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
3
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
The A.V. ClubKayla Kumari UpadhyayaDec 8, 2014
Season 1 Review: There’s a considerable amount of restraint in the story’s telling.... Precisely because of its unflinching grimness, One Child is one of the most successful critiques of a broken system. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushDec 5, 2014
Season 1 Review: This isn't an easy movie to watch, but even at its most bleak, the scenes between the long-estranged mother and daughter are beyond poignant as they find common purpose. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf SmithDec 4, 2014
Season 1 Review: Mei’s dogged and often clumsy efforts to bring the truth to light ought to seem laughably naive. Yet the more we grasp the enormity of what she is up against--a relentless apparatus of which every citizen of China is aware--the harder we root for Mei and her tiny Chinese family. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyHillary BusisNov 26, 2014
Season 1 Review: Scenes of Mei trying to reconnect with her past has a few clever touches.... But it also has enough clunky dialogue, poor production values, and sluggish pacing to alienate viewers, too. [5 Dec 2014, p.77]
60
VarietyBrian LowryDec 3, 2014
Season 1 Review: If it’s a flawed exploration of the old nature-vs.-nurture debate, the players and Mei’s predicament consistently make it interesting. Read full review
58
The Detroit NewsTom LongDec 5, 2014
Season 1 Review: One Child spends too much time running in place--which may reflect China’s inert bureaucracy, but falls short of riveting viewing. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandDec 1, 2014
Season 1 Review: While the miniseries is sometimes compelling and belatedly rises closer to its potential in the final third of the second night, it’s a sad case of great talent being wasted on badly handled material. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChris CabinDec 2, 2014
Season 1 Review: For all its clear outrage, One Child presents absolutely zero challenging ideas of what to do in reaction to these sort of crimes against humanity, other than to ostensibly deal with it. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterTim GoodmanDec 5, 2014
Season 1 Review: Both the writing and the directing fall short in One Child, leaving good actors to work with material that’s mostly not there and viewers reminded of the fact that good intentions are not always enough. Read full review
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