Political Animals

The show's tone [is] vulgar, jolly and winning. [16 Jul 2012, p.39]

Political Animals' rich characters and complicated relationships seem like they'd need six seasons to develop.

Political Animals can be slightly murky when it comes to invoking issues and ideologies. But when it comes to the microlevel of politics, the misdirection and machinations politicians employ to satisfy their own ambitions and thwart those of others, Political Animals is peerless.

[Political Animals is] a high-class, relatively naturalistic, behind-closed-doors soap opera that plays in fairly obvious yet also fairly affecting ways with the space between public face and private pain and is made highly watchable by an excellent cast that finds the human among the hokum.

Political Animals is a welcome escape from the current campaign grind, leaving us already hoping for a second term.

The dialogue can be crisp, sharp and witty, particularly among colleagues in both the White House and at the Globe.

Political Animals hews fairly closely to the USA tone and smartly employs any number of light-drama conventions, thus it can likely be enjoyed simply as an entertainment

Political Animals verges right up to the edge of ludicrous with the right combination of salty-sweet and silly-smart.

Fortunately, as the saga unfolds, it delves into fresher territory, and Political Animals becomes an intriguing, even occasionally humorous, family soap opera.

With a cast this good, and with so many potentially juicy conflicts already in play, I'm going to take a more optimistic point of view than Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver) might.

It's more interesting when Elaine takes aim at the easy-target man's world she inhabits.

There are just enough witty lines and interesting choices, such as in the editing of the bulimia scene, to create fleeting sensations that all is not dross.

This half-comic, half-serious soap opera à clef could be awful, but instead it is surprisingly fun.

A slapdash, invigorating, flawed-but-delectable mini-series with a premise of brass balls.

What distinguishes the good ones are colorful performances, scandalous twists, and the age-old reminder that money and power can't buy love--all of which Political Animals has.

Political Animals crams elements of conventional TV fare into a blender and makes something that is wildly different and kind of liberating.

If you found the parallel universe in Lost perplexing, Political Animals's sheer optimism might leave you utterly baffled. Yet Weaver's grounding performance goes beyond maternal warmth and shrewdness, because Barrish doesn't just see the best in people; she demands it.

It is nowhere near as sharp or as on-point as it needs to be.

Think the Clintons meet "Dallas" in D.C. And that, for six episodes, may be enough.

Too much of Political Animals feels like good-enough-for-government-work drama, and I can't help believing it would have been more compelling, maybe genuinely subversive, if it had replaced some of the scenes that attack the show's main themes head-on with pick-axes, and substituted ones that showed the female characters simply doing their jobs, commanding more than reluctant respect from men.

Political Animals may be super-fun, but it is also superficial.

Political Animals, an inconsistent, sometimes ludicrous, but also juicily fun political soap, is about something that ultimately makes for better TV: the idea of Hillary Clinton.

No one associated with Political Animals needs to hide under the covers, exactly, but nothing here qualifies as a game-changer, either.

Sunday's 90-minute premiere makes for an unintended hoot, both ridiculous and often ridiculously watchable.

The actors are great, but the show isn't.

It's not a Comedy Central spoof, but it skews ridiculously close to one.

This is more soap opera than satire, an intermittently entertaining but not exactly subtle look at the private and public lives of one extremely colorful family.

What Animals is trying to do is take The West Wing and turn it into Dallas. And if you don't like Dallas, that can be a real letdown.

It would have been better served by focusing on the first word in its title, not the second.

While it's hard to imagine that the show won't continue if it's a hit, Sunday's premiere marks an inauspicious debut that ignores the sound advice given to all writers: show, don't tell.

it's a clanking, clattering collection of collagenous clinkers--of dialogue so inept, of acting performances so preposterous, of plot points so cliched that the only question worth posing is why someone of Weaver's stature would be caught anywhere near a turkey like this.