The English

It is not an easy watch by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps that’s what makes the payoff so sizable. Despite its near-insurmountable density, The English ends six protracted hours as one of the year’s most memorable series, thanks largely in part to its astounding two leads. ... This is Blick’s bleeding-hearted love letter to the genre, and by its end, The English join the ranks of the grandest entries ever made.

A massively ambitious and original take on the Western genre confirming the extraordinary writing and directing skills of TV auteur Hugo Blick, while showcasing one of Emily Blunt’s greatest performances yet.

There are some slightly contrived overlapping moments and one particular narrative choice I found unnecessary. Still, on the whole, Blick’s intertwined story of the brutality and redemptive possibilities of the American West nearing the turn of the century is a gripping and memorable adventure.

Flaws and all, The English is impossible to look away from. It’s a bold, epic take on the Western, drawing from a half-dozen different cinematic modes and smashing them together until the pieces fit.

It’s rare to see a variation on the theme achieve the depth and poignance of The English. ... The story of Cornelia and Eli is a different kind of lie; it’s a fiction, and one whose sentimentality in later installments of the six-episode series barely undermines its beauty as a counter-narrative. Violent, macabre, and in many ways tragic, The English doesn’t deny what we know about what really happened when cultures collided on the frontier. Instead, it finds beauty in imagining how different people in the same situation, driven by purer motives and united by trust, might have built something better.

“The English” outlines at least one theory: Bloodshed is the American way, and so is believing we can put it behind us. Blick’s explanation is nestled somewhere within the connection between its graceful aesthetics and ruthless inclinations, its sweeping romance and star-crossed lovers, its white flags and red ones.

The English resonates with its gritty, lived-in atmosphere, and it never loses sight of the humanity at the heart of this tragic tale. No matter how brutal, how bloody, how blistering the quest for vengeance and reclamation is, the unbreakable bonds forged between characters remain center stage.

Despite the languid pace of the first episode, the unique perspectives at play in The English make it different enough from your standard Western to make it interesting.

“The English” is not really a love story and the reasons why are really part of the payoff, although Ms. Blunt from the outset gives the sense that Cornelia is a woman with nothing to lose.

At its best, The English feels like it could’ve been made by the Coen brothers. And for a Thursday night drama on BBC Two, that’s a huge compliment.

The nagging sense that the sloppy middle prevents the series from being something truly special by its heightened and emotional end is a minor disappointment. But its’ breadth, ambition and technical virtuosity make it well worth seeking out nevertheless.

Blunt is fantastic, as are many of her co-stars. The whole thing looks gorgeous, and it has some thoughtful variations on Blick’s pet theme about what happens when people from one culture get mixed up in the affairs of another. But despite a seemingly straightforward revenge plot, its storytelling frequently turns too complicated for its own good. ... Despite that, the leads and most of the supporting players are just so much fun to watch, as is the show as a whole.

There is too much speechifying in a style that brings to mind the films of Quentin Tarantino. For the above reasons, you might be tempted to give up on it after the first episode. I certainly was. But I’d recommend that you persevere. It unfolds into an operatic tale of revenge and romance set against the backdrop of a lawless American West in the late 19th century.

For three blissfully bleak episodes, The English comes off like a classic odyssey, less focused on the eventual destination than the windblown stops along the way. And then the wheels start to come off. ... Still, it's worth sticking with The English just for the lead performances.

Every time that Blunt and Spencer start volleying dialogue, it's easy to just get lost in this show.

With so much bloodshed and so many haunting images, “The English” isn’t for the faint of heart, but it packs a stylized punch.

The English does not quite thrive, but where it fails, it fails in intriguing ways.

Blunt and Spencer are almost enough to keep you invested. While the show certainly loses some steam nearly every time it meanders into another subplot, it does manage to include some interesting characters along the way. ... But the overall story is disjointed and convoluted. This is a revisionist Western that may scratch a specific itch while never really turning into the bolder show it aims to be.

The connections between its diffuse narrative strands remain murky for much of its running time, making the proceedings feel scattered, unfocused, and incoherent. Few things, however, are clearer than love and revenge—and the relationship between Cornelia and Eli achieves far greater acuity than the developments that surround it.

Exceedingly grim and often very twisted Western fable. [21 Nov - 4 Dec 2022, p.5]

I can see that there are many things to admire about The English. The cinematography, for instance; the sparky, economical use of dialogue; the stillness of Emily Blunt’s acting. But I can’t seem to take to it.

There are hints of an in-depth, poignant tale hidden within The English, as Eli and Cornelia struggle with retaining parts of their identities after experiencing tragedy. But the show so explicitly wants to establish its Western atmosphere that the plot becomes an afterthought.

For as much promise as “The English” has, and the consistently beautiful — if strangely pristine, given the brutality constantly at hand — Western landscapes bookending every scene, “frustrating” ends up the word most fitting to describe the series at large.

The series features gorgeous cloud-specked skies and sweeping horizons in what feels like an homage to John Ford westerns. But most of those elements (including the aforementioned dialogue) feel assembled in such a self-conscious and heavy handed way as to blunt the tribute, making it difficult to discern for whom this exercise is intended, other than creating a TV vehicle to bring Blunt’s marquee name to Amazon’s content-hungry shelves.