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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
8
Mixed:
21
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
The IndependentMay 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
I suspect your enjoyment of Snowpiercer the TV show will depend on how much you like the core idea. You could make the case that this is grim, silly dystopian sci-fi, a comic-book idea that got out of hand. I think it’s a fabulous premise, realised here with less anger than in the film, but equal wit and imagination and the same clarity of setting.
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May 13, 2020
Season 1 Review:
This is a great-looking series, with just enough CGI shots taken from outside the train to remind us of the ludicrously spectacular nature of this rolling experiment, and nifty camerawork taking us from the colorful decadence of first class through the “Night Car,” a club dripping with opportunities to explore the sins of the flesh, through the “Ocean Car,” with its tanks of fish, to the dark and hopeless and suffocating world of the tailies. Daveed Diggs gives a powerful performance as Layton.
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May 14, 2020
Season 1 Review:
What “Snowpiercer” does best in early episodes is world-building. But it’s problematic for the show’s long-term prospects that the various train cars — cattle car, aquarium car, classroom car, night club car (with multiple levels and a surprising number of staircases for a train) — stir up more initial excitement than the characters or story.
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May 13, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Though many of its 1,001 cars are cast in a familiar mold, Snowpiercer still manages to find new ways to interrogate power structures, as well as build up steam—or rather, power the eternal engine—for a second season of quietly compelling stories. Its style might not match its ambition, but after an arduous trek, Snowpiercer mostly proves to be worth the wait.
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The IndependentJan 28, 2021
Season 2 Review:
Despite this competent ensemble, the opening episode rests heavily on Bean’s arrival, and – quite aside from the typically fraught issue of whether his character will survive – it’s not entirely clear how Snowpiercer will maintain our interest without a descent into family soap.
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The GuardianMay 26, 2020
May 11, 2020
Season 1 Review:
While Episode 1 overexerts itself juggling multiple storylines (there’s a B-story involving a young tailie that simply vanishes for long stretches), the episodes that follow are more tightly wound as the murder case, which dominates half of the 10-episode season, takes frightful turns.
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IndieWireMay 11, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Season 1 is as about as far removed from Bong’s cinematic vision as you can get, without reaching the “so bad it’s good” level of TV that inspires mouth-agape hate-watching. The show is fine. It’s just fine. In an all-too-obvious twist, it’s exactly the kind of science-fiction drama that TNT has been making for roughly a decade.
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TV Guide MagazineJan 28, 2021
Season 2 Review:
It's says a lot that the best episode takes place mostly off the train. [1 - 14 Feb 2021, p.7]
May 15, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The TV version is larger in scope, messier in execution, and bathed in a basic cable aesthetic that couldn’t be more mainstream. Even its grit has a bit of gloss on it. Still, Snowpiercer is not an entirely bad show. It’s not great, either. Really what it does is start out meh, then become more compelling from the midway point onward, which averages out to a final assessment of halfway decent.
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May 13, 2020
Season 1 Review:
So while insurrection boils at the back of the train, fomented by a proletariat in perpetual motion, “Snowpiercer” also becomes a police procedural. A stylish production as well, though one does have to make concessions—this “Snowpiercer” is nothing like the original, nor could it be—as well as leaps of faith and suspensions of disbelief.
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May 12, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A mess, full of half-developed characters, illogical plot choices and incompletely realized social satire. But it's not awful. Thanks to solid production values, maybe a half-dozen amusingly pitched performances and several moments of giddy lunacy, Snowpiercer settles into a watchable rhythm.
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May 11, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Bong’s film of this material had an equally thudding manner of carrying across its point. What is new here is the relative dullness of characters’ dialogue and backstories. It’s somewhat grounding that even in the midst of chaos, cataclysm and global reorganization around a bizarre means of conveyance, folks will still speak mainly in cliché; it’s also true enough to life. ... The result is watchable, but not much more.
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Jan 29, 2021
Season 2 Review:
Bean is clocking plenty of overtime working his nefarious side for the fans, but none of the hard work going into this production is enough to counteract the grim depression saturating this endless trip. Round and round the world the train goes while also moving further into downer territory.
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May 15, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Seemingly a difficult concept in the best of times, Snowpiercer becomes more problematic in the midst of a pandemic, focusing as it does on humanity's warring remnants in a post-apocalyptic world. Even adopting a charitable view of that bleak outlook, the show suffers from soapy silliness, stilted situations and a lack of narrative momentum, preventing this train from ever getting out of the station.
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RogerEbert.comMay 15, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s a show that’s so overtly plot-heavy that it has no time for little things like character and setting. It just keeps pushing forward, completely unwilling to give you people to care about in this vision of the future, hoping that you’ll just go along for the ride.
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May 15, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The series transforms itself significantly in the season’s back half, and a lot of wild things happen right on top of one another (including some pretty fun action sequences, albeit nothing remotely as great as the movie’s axe fights). But asking viewers to slog through a slow, mediocre fake police show to get to what you’re really doing isn’t reasonable in Peak TV.
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May 14, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The action is routine, the drama tends toward the banal and sentimental, and the social symbolism of class division and technocracy, while cleverly worked out, isn’t compelling or coherent enough to tie it all together. ... Connelly’s performance as a tightly wound, fiercely competent woman bearing a crushing responsibility is so good that it’s almost enough reason to watch.
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May 19, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Snowpiercer doesn’t even get out of the station before it goes off the rails. ... The standout performance comes from The Americans’ Alison Wright as Connelly’s second in command—she does a nice riff on Tilda Swinton’s gonzo performance from the film—but in general, the quality of the writing and acting are very basic cable, even for basic cable.
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