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Positive:
25
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
ColliderOct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The Good Lord Bird does an excellent job of balancing its serious subject matter with an almost breezy folktale tone. Each episode contains both profoundly emotional moments and beats that will make you laugh out loud. Also, it never veers into exploitation, which is a common pitfall in films that deal with American slavery.
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IndieWireOct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Rather than inflate or canonize John Brown, “The Good Lord Bird” embraces his humanity (even when it leans more toward explosive entertainment than strict historiography). And what entertainment it is. With a rollicking pilot from director Albert Hughes (“Menace II Society,” “From Hell”), the limited series is bursting with lively music, well-staged shootouts, and a wicked sense of humor. Holding it all together is Hawke.
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RogerEbert.comSep 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It is a Western at its core, filled with incredible settings and design, but it is vibrantly alive in ways that television versions of this genre haven’t been in years. Anchored by a truly remarkable performance from Ethan Hawke, “The Good Lord Bird” is smart, entertaining television that doesn’t highlight or underline its timeliness or messages as much as it allows the viewers to do half the work.
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TV Guide MagazineSep 28, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A boldly entertaining and ultimately moving seven-part limited series, producer and star Ethan Hawke does justice to the legend, and to history. [28 Sep - 11 Oct 2020, p.9]
Oct 26, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Certain skitlike scenes are thrillingly reminiscent of Monty Python; the series is like a cross between “Masterpiece Theatre” and a particularly elaborate episode of “Drunk History.” Hawke alternately stars and recedes into the background, as “The Good Lord Bird” swings nimbly from pulpy proto-Western to surreal, somewhat anachronistic social satire. ... The comedy of “The Good Lord Bird” is bawdy and dry, but the show is bighearted.
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Oct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The show suffers a bit whenever Hawke is offscreen for too long, such as when Onion and his shrewd pal Bob (Hubert Point-Du Jour) split from Brown’s army for a time and our hero endeavors to hide his “true nature” while apprenticing at a brothel. But it’s enjoyable, in its humor, insight and preservation of McBride’s vivid language, even when its narrative momentum slackens.
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Oct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
What matters most is that the series takes a brutish time in history frequently presented dryly out of respect, and dares successfully to capture the uproarious insanity of a righteous, outgunned rebel. Brown's image may not be wholly transformed by this rendition of "The Good Lord Bird," but surely Hawke's work here should elevate our estimation of his skills and how far he's willing to do to resurrect our estimation of figures moldering and, if not forgotten, at least somewhat misconstrued.
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Oct 1, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The Good Lord Bird” isn’t like many of the wrong-headed white savior stories I’ve seen; Hawke’s complex performance helps avoid some of those tropes (which are mentioned in Onion’s narration right at the top of the series), and the emphasis on Onion’s story as an orphan finding his power helps even more.
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Sep 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s startling how many laughs Hawke generates — and, for that matter, how funny The Good Lord Bird is as a whole, given its subject matter. Hawke, Richard, and their other collaborators (among the directors: Albert Hughes, Kevin Hooks, and Haifaa Al-Mansour) have managed to retain the satirical spirit of McBride’s book.
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Sep 23, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Executive producer McBride, Hawke and Richard don't want to fall into white savior tropes, and as big as Hawke's performance is, the grandiosity is there primarily to be punctured; Brown's very real affection for Onion is captured by Hawke more in beats of quiet regard than paternalistic puffery. Seven hours of The Good Lord Bird left me both clear-eyed about John Brown as a historical figure and curious to learn more. Above all, it left me with zero doubts about Hawke’s ever-evolving talent.
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Movie NationOct 10, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The performances, the production’s gritty authenticity and the high stakes struggle mixed with droll observations about the committed but flawed people engaged in it makes “The Good Lord Bird” the TV event of the fall, and one of the best limited series of the year.
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Oct 1, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The series’s skepticism gradually melts away, leaving the final episodes to drag a bit as they focus more on constructing their vision of history rather than examining the characters and their ideals. But when it works, especially at the start, The Good Lord Bird invigorates its material with the rousing trappings of a semi-comedic western that gives it a particularly memorable sort of power.
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The PlaylistOct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
“The Good Lord Bird” shouldn’t work, but somehow the evocatively shot series leaps from the pages of history. And though it might lose its way, in the same meandering fashion as one of Brown’s prayers, writers never forget that the goal is seeing Black people fighting for their freedom.
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