The Black Donnellys
NBC | NBC; HDNET | Release Date: February 26, 2007
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
8
Negative:
12
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Kansas City StarAaron Barnhart
Season 1 Review: It feels like Haggis and Moresco are picking up right where “EZ Streets” left off. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesDoug Elfman
Season 1 Review: These tall tales flow into a stream of consciousness. That's good. The acting is convincing. That's good. The Irish stuff is heavy-handed. That's bad. Read full review
75
Detroit Free PressMike Duffy
Season 1 Review: A terrific series pilot that gives off little echoes of everything from "GoodFellas" to "The Departed." Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: All the Haggis-Moresco touches are here, from the imaginative choices and uses of music to the sly surprises and twisted humor. Read full review
75
People WeeklyTom Gliatto
Season 1 Review: It gets an unexpected freshness from a young cast. [5 Mar 2007, p.37]
70
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: If you enjoy complex, murky dramas about morally ambiguous characters, played by a talented cast of newcomers, then enjoy "The Black Donnellys" while it lasts. Read full review
70
Baltimore SunDavid Zurawik
Season 1 Review: Those viewers who can come to terms with Joey's voice will find themselves richly rewarded by the powerful performances of Tucker as Tommy Donnelly and Olivia Wilde as Jenny Reilly. Read full review
70
Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin
Season 1 Review: Where The Sopranos slices and dices American culture from a thousand different angles and The Brotherhood explores the shadowy nexus between crime and politics, The Black Donnellys sticks mainly to the vices, virtues and vicissitudes of family. Read full review
70
Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm
Season 1 Review: It's a swell story, if sometimes grim. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)John Leonard
Season 1 Review: What we have here is accomplished and absorbing television. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker
Season 1 Review: Haggis equates the slow revealing of character and plot with classy writing; you'll probably experience it as stuff you can see coming a mile away. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman
Season 1 Review: [It] ultimately succumbs to being an inferior story on a broadcast network that can't even remotely match two far better cable series ["The Sopranos" and "Brotherhood"]. Read full review
50
New York PostLinda Stasi
Season 1 Review: While "Studio 60" is/was an annoying, insidery and smug series about the inside doings of the annoyingly smug cast of a "Saturday Night Live-ish" show, "Donnellys" is the annoying, insidery and smug series about the doings of the Donnelly brothers, low-level thugs in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. Read full review
50
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray
Season 1 Review: I just couldn't buy in. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterBarry Garron
Season 1 Review: Maybe this show would be more compelling if the Donnellys were a little less black and a little more gray. Read full review
40
Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall
Season 1 Review: If "Donnellys" wants a shot at doing better than "Studio 60" in its timeslot, it needs at least a hint of a larger-than-life figure. Read full review
40
Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
Season 1 Review: Ultimately "The Black Donnellys" pales in the light of its lofty influences. Read full review
40
SlateTroy Patterson
Season 1 Review: The next four episodes are nowhere near as patient and controlled as that cinematic pilot, but, man, are they Irish: the wakes, the neon shamrock, the epigraphs from W.B. Yeats and D.P. Moynihan. And the show keeps this magnificent blarney up even as it swipes half its ideas from the playbooks of Scorsese and The Godfather. Read full review
30
Seattle Post-IntelligencerMelanie McFarland
Season 1 Review: It sounds like the kind of "keeping up with HBO" series Showtime would do, except the premium cable channel already aired an Irish mobster series, "Brotherhood." And it had richer characters and superior plotting. Read full review
30
Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker
Season 1 Review: The Black Donnellys is not top of the world... or the second coming of The Sopranos. The new drama is old wine poured into fancy, contemporary bottles. Read full review
30
VarietyBrian Lowry
Season 1 Review: [A] grim, brooding, utterly muddled crime series. Read full review
30
L.A. WeeklyRobert Abele
Season 1 Review: Unfortunately, the young actors on display aren’t compelling enough to make us care much beyond their sometimes stupidly self-induced crises. Read full review
30
SalonHeather Havrilesky
Season 1 Review: While "The Sopranos" and "Brotherhood" make it look easy, "The Black Donnellys" makes it excruciatingly clear just how difficult it is to tell a soulful story about criminals. Read full review
25
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: You'll eventually be able to tell one gun-toting, ax-wielding character from another. You're just not likely to develop a desire to spend time with them. Read full review
20
NewsdayVerne Gay
Season 1 Review: "Donnellys" creaks and sighs, moans and slumps, and ambles along like a world-weary cliche, unable or unwilling to lift its head above the humdrum banality to which it has been consigned. Read full review
20
TV Guide MagazineMatt Roush
Season 1 Review: To say these guys are stereotypes does insult to the clichés they clumsily represent. Read full review
10
Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan
Season 1 Review: This pretentious mishmash is a paint-by-numbers Irish-American "Sopranos" ripoff. Read full review
10
The New York TimesVirginia Heffernan
Season 1 Review: Like “Crash,” “The Black Donnellys” is more of a lecture than a drama. Read full review
10
Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf Smith
Season 1 Review: As they stumble from one brutal act to another, accompanied by a hip rock soundtrack, we're not watching dramatic art; it's more like "Dawson's Creek" for psychopaths. Read full review
0
Los Angeles TimesPaul Brownfield
Season 1 Review: NBC sent out five episodes; I sat through three before throwing the DVD on the Donate to Public Library pile. I would like to apologize in advance to the library. Read full review
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