Tulsa King

A dramedy that is implausible, corny and yet quite enjoyable. Tulsa King will win no prizes for nuance or plot. ... It is watchable, despite many things not adding up.

The second episode of Tulsa King gave us hope that the series can be an enjoyable series with a bit of a sense of a humor about its fish-out-of-water conceit and that Stallone can turn down the Sly schtick. But there were still a lot of issues that make us think that the show could end up being as nuanced as a plate of spaghetti topped with ketchup.

“Tulsa King” is adequate, semi-engaging, mildly charming, somewhat funny, and feels like it has potential, but mostly feels—so far—like just another Taylor Sheridan series about crime, the complications of their extended and found families, and the territories that people find themselves defending and living on, either by need or circumstance.

The Tulsa location is distinctive. Stallone is never not interesting, so the best moments are his quiet ones. ... The question for Tulsa King going forward is whether it can complicate Dwight's archaic act or sanctify him as a boomer bull in a millennial china shop. Right now, it's a frictionless fantasy about making instant friends, attracting younger women, and instantly knowing everything about the legal pot industry.

A slim vehicle for Sylvester Stallone that’s a little too overtly designed as a mobster fish out of water.

Entirely too conventional and workmanlike to be a remarkable series. ... In “Tulsa King,” Stallone inhabits a role clearly conceived with him in mind, and it makes all the difference. “Tulsa King” is a clumsy misfire, but when the show works, it works precisely because of Stallone’s charming, if characteristically mannered, performance. ... Stallone [is] oddly watchable in a show that usually isn’t.

On almost every level, it hits the most obvious of genre beats, resorts to the most obvious of punchlines. If there are absolutely hints of a potentially likable series here, anchored by a nicely self-effacing performance from Stallone, most of what’s currently on display is reminiscent of either a middlebrow TNT series from 2010 or an elongated version of a movie Stallone might have made between Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.