Tyrant

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.

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.

When the drama comes, shall we say, to a head, you'll be hard-pressed not to burst into laughter.

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.

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.

For all of Tyrant’s big themes, it can feel oddly small.

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.

Despite the novel setting, everything about the show feels stodgy and cliched.

Content is the much bigger issue here. In the pilot, Tyrant at times comes perilously close to embracing derogatory media stereotypes of Arabs.

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.

By the end of the first episode, we're already sick of Jamal and weary of Barry's complaining about being back home.

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.