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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
13
Mixed:
13
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
RogerEbert.comSep 17, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Enamored with its characters to a possible fault, The First is cut and paced like the roughly 368-minute director’s cut; you can imagine a two-hour film, probably with the same budget, that hits the same emotional beats and divides audiences like previous high-concept sci-fi stories like "Contact" did. As is, The First is a noble, ambitious series, but one that demands equally ambitious viewers.
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Sep 14, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Not all of the series’ risks pay off, and the overall approach is so counterintuitive that it’s bound to frustrate audiences who expected more of a problem-solving space mission story along the lines of Apollo 13 or The Martian. ... But once you get used to The First’s peculiar rhythms, it weaves a spell that’s somewhere between a ’90s John Wells drama (think ER or The West Wing) and a slowed-down TV answer to Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life especially).
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TV Guide MagazineSep 13, 2018
Season 1 Review:
This eight-episode series created by Beau Willimon has all the right stuff. Sean Penn, in his first TV series regular role, delivers a tremendously affecting performance. ... Some genre fans may gripe it takes the show too long to achieve liftoff, but that's the point. [17-30 Sep 2018, p.24]
Sep 12, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The series builds well after its stop-and-start beginning. It reminds you that before House of Cards went off the rails with soap opera high jinks and Kevin Spacey hamminess, it was a promising show about the personal cost of power. Think of The First similarly, rather than as Mars Trek, and you could be intrigued.
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Sep 11, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Hagerty and Ingram do, at times, veer toward predictability but it doesn’t impede the series overall feel (and, let’s face it, this is a series that needs viewers to be emotionally invested in its characters.) Willimon’s writing, pacing and sense of place, so evident in “House of Cards” (particularly in Seasons 1 and 2) resonates here.
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Sep 4, 2018
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