- Network: HULU
- Series Premiere Date: Apr 28, 2022
Critic Reviews
- Critic score
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- By date
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Black let the story sprawl too much. Ultimately, this has the sheen of prestige TV without ever quite delivering.
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Such institutions [like the LDS church] promise clarity, but people are messy. As a series, Under the Banner of Heaven struggles to maintain focus, but it never loses faith in that fact.
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Under the Banner of Heaven doesn’t hit the suspenseful beats we’ve come to expect from crime drama, but it has nuance the genre often lacks. What’s more interesting than how Jeb’s faith helps him crack the case is how often it gets in his way.
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A moody and well-paced but schematic seven-part miniseries. ... “Under the Banner of Heaven” is most compelling when it explores the circumstances that paved the way for the Lafferty brood’s self-conversion and smartly concludes there’s no single reason for it. ... As the Laffertys become radicalized, Pyre’s crisis of faith and challenging home life become comparatively less engaging.
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Overall, the show struggles under the weight of its history lessons, how to balance them with action and how to convey them to what may be an unfamiliar audience.
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The show gets more scattered as it goes, having trouble juggling (and distinguishing) its array of characters. ... The series is, at least, anchored by solid performances.
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There’s at once too much packed into the series’ installments and yet not enough, with Black and company expending unwarranted attention on a cornucopia of detours and diversions that are only sometimes fleshed out, go nowhere illuminating, and muddle this affair’s primary censure of the Mormon church as a violent 19th-century-style cult-y outfit.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 19
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Mixed: 2 out of 19
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Negative: 2 out of 19
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Apr 29, 2022
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Jun 25, 2022
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May 10, 2022