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Positive:
51
Mixed:
3
Negative:
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Critic Reviews
Sep 11, 2018
Season 2 Review:
The second season pays dividends to the viewer in the form of taut and lively performances. ... If you’re not already invested in this drama, you may find this season to be shinier, brighter and more seductive than before. The Deuce was already an excellent drama. Now it’s definitively one of the best shows on TV.
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Sep 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The look of The Deuce is thoroughly transporting, and that’s just the start. ... As with “The Wire” and “Treme,” we meet a large, multicultural ensemble of characters in The Deuce, most of them written with remarkable specificity and distinguished by shrewd acting choices. And as with “The Wire” and “Treme,” their stories piece together slowly but surely into a single broad canvas of Americans on the fringes of our economic system.
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IndieWireSep 9, 2019
Season 3 Review:
A stunning, transportive experience each and every episode. More importantly, this mesmeric atmosphere allows Simon and Pelecanos to implement an unusual storytelling structure; a time capsule approach that chronicles the most important moments for its story and characters, like anything else, but that doesn’t promise immediate thrills, constant conflict, or your traditional episodic build toward a crescendo.
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IndieWireSep 6, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Each narrative strand works to prove a point and tell an intriguing story, and yet for as compelling--and complicated--as the Martino brothers’ lives remain, all of their hustle and bustle pales in comparison to the work done by Maggie Gyllenhaal. ... Gyllenhaal handles every aspect of Eileen with an earned authenticity.
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Sep 9, 2019
Season 3 Review:
What may strike you about the drama’s third season is its ease of viewing compared to prior seasons. This is not to suggest that Season 3 is necessarily better than the others; the writing on this show is consistently stellar throughout its run, and the cast is one of the best on television.
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The Daily BeastSep 11, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Female characters are now taking center stage, both in the show and in their own lives. Seizing that agency doesn’t come easily, of course, but it’s their struggle for it and even just their awakening to its possibility that it is gratifying to watch. ... The empowerment of these women makes the show’s study of masculinity all the richer, complicating the pimp characters and the work of their performers. ... A highlight of this fall’s dizzying TV lineup.
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RogerEbert.comSep 7, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Simon and Pelecanos seem to have hit their stride with this particular story, expertly balancing character-driven storytelling with a wide-angle view of the social, economic, political, cultural, sexual, and gendered dynamics of the era. As before, authenticity and accuracy reign supreme; as before, the era and area are both drawn so vividly you almost can’t help but conjure up the smell. But the series feels newly relevant and resonant, and that’s the cleverest trick the show pulls.
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TV Guide MagazineSep 14, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Vividly teeming with tragicomic life and reeking of desperation, danger and moral decay, the series takes a while to build an actual story--a common trait nowadays in high-minded long-form TV Narratives--but by the end of the first eight hours, an decriminalized porn becomes big business, you'll surely want to know what happens next. [18 Sep - 1 Oct 2017, p.27]
Sep 8, 2017
Season 1 Review:
It’s impeccably acted, written, and directed, and no matter how ridiculous “a series about the 1970s porn industry with two James Francos” might sound to you, this is somehow not just the best possible execution of that idea, but the most thoughtful one, too. It’s the best show of the fall, by a wide, wide margin.
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Sep 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Each of Mr. Simon’s works is ultimately about systems: people of different classes, races and levels of power, whose choices (or lack thereof) define an economy and a society. That macro idea makes The Deuce smart. Its micro detail--a Studs Terkelesque catalog of the million ways to chase a hustle--makes it art. ... But man, is there a lot of setup.
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Sep 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
For all the drama of its plot, it consistently and gratifyingly goes small, letting us learn about its characters gradually and in relation to one another. With the same granular dedication to detail that they brought to The Wire, Simon and Pelecanos show us an entire gray-market economy through the eyes of its participants. It's a triumph, and, better yet, a pleasure.
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UPROXXSep 5, 2017
Sep 7, 2018
Season 2 Review:
This new batch of episodes feels lighter--or at least has a lighter touch--than most of season one, though it doesn’t stay in that mode forever. A lot of the writing has the moment-to-moment exactness of a comedy of manners, or a casual conversation between veterans of the same business. (The Wire and Treme also excelled at those sorts of interactions.)
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Sep 11, 2017
Season 1 Review:
It’s the intricate storytelling based in areas most people would rather avoid, a stellar cast and context, context, context that makes The Deuce so much more than its naked body parts. ... There are a lot of characters here, and subplots, and stories that have yet to converge. Season 1 is just the setup.
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Sep 8, 2017
Sep 5, 2017
Aug 31, 2017
Season 1 Review:
A lot of storytelling is crammed into The Deuce--the regular and recurring cast fields nearly 40 characters, and it takes a minute to match rhythm with the cadence of each of their lives. But once you do, it’s a fascinating world: period but not nostalgic, lived in but not superficial. Maybe it has too many moving parts, but all the moving parts are a joy to look at.
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ColliderAug 31, 2017
Season 1 Review:
What really makes The Deuce so good, though, are its conversations, the cadence and truth of its dialogue, and its both bold and vulnerable performances. It captures its setting in an extraordinary way, from the cigarettes and diners and honking horns on the street to the early morning papers rustling through the gutters. Also important for a period piece: nothing feels forced, or educational, or winking.
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Aug 25, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Simon and Pelecanos are just beginning to put the machinery of The Deuce into motion in these eight episodes. As an opening act, the show's first season is substantive, provocative and entertaining. It's a journey through a certain kind of hell, but I'm already eager to return.
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Sep 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Overall, The Deuce is the kind of smart, well-written and character-driven series that won’t be overwhelmed by its sex-heavy concept, nor too reliant on it to sustain interest. What’s more important than the titillation its characters are peddling is who they are and why they’re doing it.
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Sep 8, 2017
Season 1 Review:
No one is arguing that The Deuce isn’t entertaining, if slightly cliched. But we shouldn’t pretend The Deuce is the truth. It would be easy to praise the series for being unjudgmental and focusing on the human elements. However, there was a lot of pain involved in that world, and the series is too carefully constructed for you to feel it.
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Sep 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
That it took eight episodes to get there [Gyllenhaal’s character finally throws off her Candy image to become Eileen, the director of porn scenes from a woman’s point of view] suggests two things: that The Deuce is rather muddled in its sense of purpose, and that this show really deserves a second season, to show us whether the series can take Eileen and her sisterhood into a more complex realm.
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Sep 7, 2017
Season 1 Review:
It takes a little too long for the show’s eight-episode first season to bring its focus to the porn industry, and the middle episodes in particular are dominated by less compelling, more conventional storylines. But even the more thinly sketched characters are engaging to watch, and Simon and his collaborators effectively re-create the NYC of the past, closely enough that you can feel the grit.
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Sep 6, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Despite the best efforts of the writing staff and Gyllenhaal (who became a producer on the series partly to make sure that her character was well served), there are moments when The Deuce seems to lose its grip on the leash of its worldview and the situations take on a hypnotic power that is presumably not meant to be exploitative but comes across that way anyhow. ... Its most salient virtue is its stubborn refusal to serve up any character who represents a supposedly enlightened, 21st-century-liberal point of view.
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Sep 11, 2018Sep 11, 2019
Season 3 Review:
I appreciate that The Deuce is telling this story, and that it encourages people to consider how the perpetual human urge to have or to watch others have sex is an ethical minefield. But I miss the way the show used to let us connect with its characters and the human frailty of their desires. They used to feel things; now they’re numb, parts of a storytelling engine that is running its way toward an important, but impassive, end.
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