Tyrant
FX | Release Date: June 24, 2014
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
20
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: Tyrant is the most engrossing new show of the summer.... Gordon’s razor-sharp timing, a skill honed on “24,” serves Tyrant well. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesLori RacklJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: The pilot is riveting but, like our protagonist Barry, a bit joyless. Here’s hoping the series doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own gravitas; it’s a compelling premise that plays out in a part of the world not often seen on TV. Read full review
83
NewsdayVerne GayJun 15, 2015
Season 2 Review: By the end of the first season, the show had improved significantly, if not quite dramatically, and based on a viewing of the first two episodes, that trend continues. Read full review
80
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: In its early episodes, Tyrant is as engaging when it focuses on family drama as when it veers more in the direction of taut, serialized, political thriller. Read full review
75
NewsdayVerne GayJun 30, 2016
Season 3 Review: Tyrant gets a welcome addition, along with more intrigue. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyRay RahmanJun 30, 2015
Season 2 Review: The war crimes scares off potential friends like France and China, and gives the show an absorbing current-events sheen. [3 Jul 2015]
75
USA TodayRobert BiancoJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: In essence, Tyrant is a ruling-family variant on The Godfather, shifted from Italy and America to the Middle East. But don't dismiss the shift out of hand: That move is precisely what makes Tyrant so intriguing--and so troubling. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: Both "The Godfather" and Tyrant are, at heart, about family dynamics. As the Al-Fayeed story evolves beyond Tuesday's pilot, that fact becomes clearer. Read full review
70
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen GrayJun 16, 2015
Season 2 Review: At its best, it's a family drama in an unusual setting. And after some tweaking, a more entertaining one. Read full review
70
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniJun 16, 2015
Season 2 Review: Fascinating and perplexing, enjoyable and frustrating, intelligent and obtuse at the same time. Read full review
70
The WrapTim MolloyJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: It's just a good story, cleverly told. It's not going to resolve the troubles in the Middle East, but then again, neither has anything else. Read full review
70
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: The cast, and the potential arc of the well-performed lead, will keep audiences interested but this show needs to be more engaging on an episode-to-episode level soon or they’ll move on. Read full review
70
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen GrayJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: Tyrant looks great. The cast is excellent.... The family soap opera might be more fun if the stakes weren't so high, the politics more riveting if Barry's reform attempts weren't so obviously doomed. Read full review
70
Denver PostJoanne OstrowJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: The cinematography is stunning, the music and atmospherics are immersive. With occasional hiccups the acting is mostly subtle. Suspension of disbelief will be required (how else can Bassam/Barry slip out of his father's palace in the middle of the night to rendez-vous with an old journalist buddy?) But Tyrant is worth the effort. Read full review
67
The Lincoln Journal StarJeff KorbelikJun 30, 2014
Season 1 Review: It’s brutal, violent and graphic. And it’s a story we’ve seen before. Read full review
67
Uncle BarkyEd BarkJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: Tyrant strives to be big, momentous and powerful. But while sometimes jabbing to good effect, it lacks a heavyweight’s punch. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyMelissa MaerzJun 20, 2014
Season 1 Review: Gordon has said that he's trying to dramatize the "complexity" of the Middle East, but there's not a lot of depth to the pilot.... If there's one thing that saves Tyrant, it's Bassam. By the end of the pilot, he's not the boring, all-moral hero that he seems. Read full review
63
New York PostRobert RorkeJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: The Middle East of Gordon’s Tyrant is as explosive as on “24” and “Homeland,” but he’s much better at letting the special effects guys manufacture the blasts than he is at creating those moments with his characters. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchGail PenningtonJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: The first episode of Tyrant, the only one I've seen, is both exotic (the cultural elements surrounding the wedding are fascinating) and unfortunately trite, to the point of embracing stereotypes about the Middle East that some early viewers have found offensive. Read full review
60
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenJul 5, 2016
Season 3 Review: Tyrant continues to fascinate even as it’s flawed. Adding Chris Noth as an American military leader with a connection to former first lady Leila (Moran Atias) doesn’t bring much to the series, which also suffers from a lack of sandy, panoramic exterior shots that marked the show’s first season. Read full review
60
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenJun 16, 2015
Season 2 Review: Through the first three episodes of season two, Tyrant continues to suffer its share of problems, most notably failing miserably when it comes to characters making realistic, believable choices. But viewers tuning in for just an engaging soap opera, which it is, may be willing to cut the show some slack. Read full review
60
VarietyBrian LowryJun 15, 2015
Season 2 Review: Tyrant finds more nuance in these episodes, as well as some pretty overt biblical overtones in Barry’s emotional arc. And while the character remains a rather tepid protagonist, his role in driving the story is mitigated by the unfolding events in Abbudin. Read full review
60
The New York TimesAlessandra StanleyJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: Tyrant tries so hard to make audiences comfortable with its foreign setting that the story becomes a little too familiar. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: If you can gulp hard and swallow the premise of Tyrant, you’ll find another hard, dark, intense FX drama about a world in which a lot of the normal rules don't seem to apply. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTim GoodmanJun 19, 2014
Season 1 Review: The pilot is strong and closes with a cliffhanger element that should bring back a sizeable chunk of the tune-in audience.... but having no other episodes to find out in what direction the series wants to go--not just with Barry/Bassam, but where the core of its stories will come from (family or politics), means it’s too early to give a definitive endorsement to Tyrant, despite its potential. Read full review
58
Newark Star-LedgerVicki HymanJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: When the drama comes, shall we say, to a head, you'll be hard-pressed not to burst into laughter. Read full review
50
Zap2it (Inside the Box)Terri SchwartzJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: The new FX drama from "Homeland" and "24" executive producer Howard Gordon balances family with politics in a show that constantly questions what the right choice is when torn between the two, but oftentimes finds itself bogged down in soap opera-style drama that distracts from the greater, more ambitious story that it's trying to tell. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeSarah RodmanJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: It has some compelling elements and some weaknesses, but since so much of what happens in the pilot is pure setup, it’s hard to tell where it’s going to go and if it will do so in a way that is engrossing or, given its subject matter, problematic. Read full review
50
SlateWilla PaskinJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: For all of Tyrant’s big themes, it can feel oddly small. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubJoshua AlstonJun 16, 2015
Season 2 Review: For viewers who want their Middle East intrigue overpowered by sugar and salt, then spoon-fed to them, Tyrant is doing that as well as ever. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubEmily VanDerWerffJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: Too often subsumed by the show’s desire to make a grand statement and its inability to realize that often gets in the way of just telling a compelling story. Read full review
42
HitfixAlan SepinwallJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: Despite the novel setting, everything about the show feels stodgy and cliched. Read full review
42
NewsdayVerne GayJun 20, 2014
Season 1 Review: Content is the much bigger issue here. In the pilot, Tyrant at times comes perilously close to embracing derogatory media stereotypes of Arabs. Read full review
40
Yahoo TVKen TuckerJul 6, 2016
Season 3 Review: The problem with the series isn’t the casting or its philosophical underpinnings, though--its chief flaw remains one of pacing. Long scenes of dialogue and debate become wearisome. Read full review
40
The OregonianKristi TurnquistJul 5, 2016
Season 3 Review: For every slight improvement--more fully developed female characters, the always watchable Chris Noth as an American General who arrives as part of U.S. efforts to help bring democracy to Abuddin--Tyrant still fizzles more often than it sizzles. Read full review
40
The Daily BeastAndrew RomanoJun 25, 2014
Season 1 Review: The case [ordon and Raff] make on Tyrant isn't particularly convincing, or even all that entertaining. The details are too generic. The conflicts are too simplistic. Abbudin is too unreal. Read full review
40
The OregonianKristi TurnquistJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: By the end of the first episode, we're already sick of Jamal and weary of Barry's complaining about being back home. Read full review
40
VarietyBrian LowryJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: While the subject matter certainly feels timely given chaotic events abroad and the show possesses a strong creative pedigree, it also suffers from a sense of self-importance that drags at the whole exercise. Read full review
40
Cleveland Plain DealerMark DawidziakJun 20, 2014
Season 1 Review: As Barry struggles with his sense of identity, so does this series. There is little consistency of tone here, and the efforts to depict a realistic Middle Eastern political struggle are undermined by campy and melodramatic moments. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamaraJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: In attempting to mix West with Middle East, the show too often seems content with stereotyping both. Read full review
30
TimeJames PoniewozikJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: Though his Barry is a bit of a stiff, Rayner among the least of the show’s problems. There’s not a fleshed-out character in the show. Read full review
30
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: Some ambitious but flawed dramas get better the more you watch. Tyrant is not one of them. The plotting is obvious, the characters broadly and shallowly drawn, and authenticity evaporates the moment you realize everyone in this land is speaking in clipped Faux-rabian British accents like out of some '40s melodrama. Read full review
30
Washington PostHank StueverJun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review: A clumsily written and stultifyingly acted TV drama stocked with tired and terribly broad notions of Muslim culture in a make-believe nation on the brink. Read full review
0
The Huffington PostMaureen RyanJun 24, 2014
Season 1 Review: It's surprising to me that this ever got past the development stage, because nothing about Tyrant truly works. It's a halting, strained hodgepodge that ends up being an awkward mixture of bland and offensive. Read full review
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