Sorry for Your Loss

It’s the kind of series that’s instantly so fully formed, so funny and candid and wrenching right from the start, that you almost question the emotional propriety of it all.

Sorry For Your Loss is a gem of a show. With a cast this impressive--in Olsen, an Avenger; in Tran, a Star Wars alum; in McTeer, a renowned Oscar nominee--a series this well-executed would ordinarily be a marquee entry in the fall TV season.

Sorry for Your Loss is like a beautifully written sad song: You’re not always in the right mood to listen to it... but when you are, it can reach you in places that nothing else can.

It’s a meticulously observed and often cathartic experience, the kind of show that can make a person feel seen for the first time.

It’s not a lighthearted binge, but Sorry for Your Loss works because it’s as interested in Leigh’s healing as it is in her suffering.

The show is smart about the connective tissue of memory and how places or sensory experiences can serve as time machines, making a lie of any suggestion that it's easy to move forward after tragedy. ... This already feels like a show of some worth, even if it requires accepting yet another stream of TV into what is a roaring river.

With the help of some sharp writing, charismatic supporting characters, and Olsen’s slyly sympathetic performance, Kit Steinkellner’s drama finds a way to portray the reality of grief without letting it overwhelm the show entirely.

A sensitive, nuanced and particularly well-acted dirge.

Olsen gives a disciplined and sharp performance; her Leigh is mean and acerbic in the way grieving people on TV don’t usually get to be, which makes her moments of vulnerability all the more effective. If you’re looking for a cathartic cry, stick with This Is Us; Sorry for Your Loss is best when it turns its focus from grief to all the ways the living can be better in the face of death.

Sorry for Your Loss knows what kind of story it’s telling, how to tell it well and how to avoid many of the inherent pitfalls that would instantly repel audiences. It’s good--and an early feather in the cap of this young operation.