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Positive:
33
Mixed:
11
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Jul 23, 2013
Season 2 Review:
It talks to real life, the way "Cosby" talks to family fantasies. It deals with alcohol's temptations for teenagers. It speaks to the frustration of being forced to take a menial job just because it puts food on the table. It looks at growing up and growing together and growing apart, with all the pain and laughter that come along for the ride. And it does it all with... class, plus great creativity. [14 May 1990]
Mar 9, 2018
Season 10 Review:
As with the original, the new Roseanne is most enjoyable when it focuses on the everyday life of the Conners. ... Gilbert’s delivery of Darlene’s brutal zingers remains deadpan perfection (“The only reason you look younger than me is because you’re embalmed in Mike’s Hard Lemonade,” she tells Becky); Metcalf balances her character’s exaggerated intensity with superb comic timing; and the old-married-couple chemistry between Barr and Goodman is still relaxed and believable.
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Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
This is the likely big hit of the '88-'89 strike-delayed season, the show everyone will copy next year. [17 Oct 1988]
Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
No doubt ABC has a hit here. The show's funny, and this is something you rarely get to say about a sitcom. [16 Oct 1988]
Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
"Roseanne" is without a doubt one of the brightest new entries of the season, one of the most unusual of any season, and one of the most welcome. [18 Oct 1988]
Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Has the potential to be the best new sitcom in at least a couple of seasons. [15 Oct 1988]
Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The fact that Barr's show seems cut so authentically out of middle-class experience gives it a solid familiarity from first encounter. ... "Roseanne" is really different and really funny. [18 Oct 1988]
Mar 9, 2018
Season 10 Review:
How much you enjoy Roseanne‘s return will probably depend a great deal on how well you’re able to overlook that Trump Plaza-sized continuity gaffe. I largely managed to do that, which speaks volumes about the strength of these new episodes (only two of which I’ve seen). The cast brought its “A” game.
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The Daily BeastMar 26, 2018
Season 10 Review:
Extremely funny. ... While the premiere is heavily political, that does die down in subsequent episodes, though the show’s “edginess” doesn’t. We put that in quotes because the renegade way in which the show courted controversy decades ago has now, thanks to the doors it kicked open, become normalized.
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Mar 26, 2018
Season 10 Review:
Of the recent reboots, Roseanne fares better than most because it has allowed its characters to change. The political discussion jars a bit (was the series always this pointed?) but the family bonding holds no matter who’s in crisis mode. ... Executive Producer Bruce Helford (who was fired from the original at one point) has done his homework and found a way to make this stand on its own and pay tribute to the past.
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Mar 22, 2018
Season 10 Review:
The scripts may make political points here and there, but Roseanne is still a comedy about a family--a family of individuals. Resurrected shows give us a chance to remember what things were like when “Roseanne” and “Will & Grace” first aired, and consider how different many things are today. ... How nice to be able to turn to old friends for their take on it all.
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Mar 20, 2018
Season 10 Review:
Goodman and Metcalf slip Dan and Jackie back on like second skins; Barr isn't nearly as subtle as her co-stars, but she still has her verbal fastball, and delivers consistently solid punchlines with merciless precision. Gilbert, one of the original show's most striking presences, has seasoned Darlene's awkwardness to reflect the character's ongoing sense of misplacement and newfound feelings of failure. But the biggest surprise is Goranson, whose expressions of misery are among this new season's most haunting and nuanced flourishes.
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Mar 27, 2018
Season 10 Review:
The new Roseanne sometimes feels a little stiff--as though it hasn’t quite settled on its tone yet. ... There are numerous laughs in these new episodes (I’ve seen three of them), and Metcalf and Gilbert are very effective in all their scenes. (I’m reserving judgment on Goodman, who thus far seems to be reacquainting himself with the great performances he used to give regularly, as though he feels he still has to work out some of the kinks.)
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Mar 23, 2018
Season 10 Review:
Later, in the three episodes made available to critics ... The family will clash and jab and continue the brand of lovingly mutual mockery that made the original show so compelling. ... The first episode of the reboot--the premiere that announces the rearrival of the Conner family on the American stage--has the feel of a sitcomic form of Stockholm syndrome, its stories held captive to the battle that ended two years ago.
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Mar 20, 2018
Season 10 Review:
The sweetness of Roseanne is of a more tart variety, with that trademark Roseanne cackle and attitude serving as an astringent, but the series' more recent heirs like The Carmichael Show and Netflix One Day at a Time did similar things in a multicam format with more immediate vitality. Of course, vitality is less what Roseanne is going for than the impressive proficiency of stars who make multicam look easy.
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Uncle BarkyMar 26, 2018
Season 10 Review:
[There's] quite a lot to unpack--and the first episode is awkward at times compared to the two subsequent ones made available for review. Barr’s acting is noticeably mechanical in the early going while Goodman (who seems to have made a million movies in the interim) initially seems a little lost in the transition back to playing a character for which he received seven Emmy nominations without ever winning.
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RogerEbert.comMar 26, 2018
Season 10 Review:
The Connors find plenty to laugh about, but Barr and the Roseanne writers never let the series enter the realm of the sunny multi-cam fantasy. Happiness comes from the people you love. The world is another matter. What’s so frustrating about those on-the-nose “political” arguments is that they’re nowhere near as interesting as the actually topical stories in which they’re abruptly plunked down, like a dumbbell on the dinner table.
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Mar 22, 2018
Season 10 Review:
Unfortunately, the revived series is a bit rough around the edges. Not in terms of its humor or content, which are remarkably well-adapted for a modern audience, but in terms of its pure execution; it’s undoubtedly quite difficult to return to the rhythms of a sitcom that debuted 29 years ago. The timing all feels a little off; the transitions are abrupt, the dialogue layers unevenly, and the punch lines don’t land.
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Mar 20, 2018
Season 10 Review:
Three episodes shown to critics (there are nine in this new season) certainly do an entertaining job of updating the characters. ... Still, once Jackie and Roseanne bury the hatchet, there’s a sinking feeling of lost promise. Roseanne needs to do more than acknowledge that a Trump-voting grandmother can get along with her liberal-leaning sister and adore her sparkle-riffic grandson. It should courageously allow the Conner family to more tumultuously grapple with the idea that America is coming apart and changing profoundly.
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Mar 27, 2018
Season 10 Review:
The show takes a while to get past its politically-skewed power dynamic. ... To be fair, other top-of-mind social concerns are handled with more nuance and heart than the script’s willful leap over our simmering racial conflicts. The new Roseanne is at its best when the story explores the contortions and compromises Americans have to go through in order to secure decent health care or economic stability.
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Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's not as dark as Fox's "Married ... with Children." And not as funny. Barr is fine as a monotoned stand-up, but her routine, in both senses of the word, wears thin in the first half-hour. [26 Sep 1988]
Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Despite its aim of tweaking television's usual saccharine family vehicles--replacing, in effect, the smarmy with the snippy--it really is just another standard sitcom itself, wrapped in fitfully amusing abrasiveness. [18 Oct 1988]
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