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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
21
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
RogerEbert.comApr 16, 2024
The Daily BeastApr 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Riley Keough and Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone, are certainly compelling as the two adult women wrapped up in the investigation, it’s the teen actors who run away with the series. They give the show an unnerving, deeply gut-wrenching sense of volatility and violence, one which makes Under the Bridge almost impossible to look away from.
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Apr 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
While it is a triumph in its writing and pacing, it’s the performances that truly carry this series. Gladstone and Keough are phenomenal, especially as their characters reconnect and drift apart; Panjabi is a true force as a mother at her wits’ end. But while the heavy hitters (perhaps expectedly) give tour de force performances, it’s the exceptional outings from the young cast that make this series shine.
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The PlaylistApr 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Believing it is the key to the success of “Under the Bridge.” The first couple of episodes falter a bit in this category with some dialogue, especially for the young characters, that sounds manufactured, but that falls away as the performers and writers are allowed to flesh out these people beyond how they try to look to other people. Be patient with it. It deserves it.
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ColliderApr 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Where a lesser series could lean into shock, Under the Bridge refreshingly sidesteps most of this in favor of the darker truths one could spend lifetimes trying to understand. This crystallizes in a final sequence that, rather than settle for a clean resolution, lets the pain that accumulated over the season linger.
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Apr 19, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Shephard (and others) muddy the waters with detail that isn’t necessary. Gladstone gets her own family disconnects and has a tie to Reena that makes the case important. But Godfrey’s approach doesn’t always emerge as acceptable. To fully understand what’s at play, “Under the Bridge” needed footnotes that didn’t require whole episodes of backstory.
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Apr 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
There is an angry sexual energy between Rebecca and Cam whose source will no doubt be revealed in subsequent episodes, but which, nonetheless is irrelevant, and extraneous, to the main storyline. This is not the only unrelated, fabricated side storyline on Under the Bridge, which would benefit from some streamlining. The central story is riveting enough without these random and inconsequential side ones.
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Apr 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Though there are many well-written scenes — the performances would not be so impressive if there weren’t — over eight episodes, the series, with its shifting attention and skips back and forth in time, loses emotional force; it sustains one’s interest, certainly, but less so one’s sympathies.
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IndieWireApr 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
“Under the Bridge” deals with tough material, but it’s relatively easy to watch if you’re braced for the anguished gloom that accompanies most true-crime tales (one that’s amplified here by the stormy skies and pervasive sogginess of its Northwestern locale). But if you’re a true-crime veteran, you’ve also seen this story and heard these points before, only with ample attention and insight.
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Apr 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Gladstone and Keough are great, but their half-baked arcs feel shoehorned into the mix. Despite being scattershot, the eight episodes are emotionally devastating when focused on the teens. That’s when the show’s existence is immediately justified because it doesn’t feel exploitative.
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The Observer (UK)Sep 10, 2024
Season 1 Review:
While it’s a little unfocused and murky, Keough and Gladstone are superb. Even they are outperformed, however, by an amazing young cast led by Vritika Gupta as the rebellious but vulnerable Reena and Chloe Guidry as a young queen bee wielding more toxic power than she realises.
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The GuardianApr 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Gladstone is a reassuring on-screen presence, even if she’s forced to visibly wince at every mention of the word “race” or her boss/dad’s invocation of “sweetheart”. Keough, who rose above the middling Daisy Jones and the Six, is likewise underserved by the material.
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Apr 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Despite being based on a grim true-crime yarn, Under the Bridge makes several poor choices in translating the book to the screen, beginning with inserting the author, Rebecca Godfrey, into the story. This bridge into the familiar waters of troubled teens thus proves most notable as Lily Gladstone’s follow-up to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” albeit in a rather drab role as the local cop investigating the case.
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Apr 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
When Keough and Gladstone are on screen, alone or together, you get it. .... Quinn Shephard and company only sometimes are able to get more than surface deep with Josephine, Kelly, Warren, and the other teens. ... But on the whole, Under the Bridge is oddly at its strongest when it strays furthest away from the actual events of the case. And the sheer amount of time spent with the less-developed characters can make the viewing experience feel more punishing than revelatory at times.
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Apr 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Almost everything wrong with the series "Under the Bridge"—based on Rebecca Godfrey's 2005 nonfiction novel about teenage Canadian murder—is about conforming to the standards of TV drama, not to mention the relentlessly unpleasant characters spouting impossibly vapid dialogue. .... The murder-mystery aspect of "Under the Bridge" is more complicated than it might first appear and at moments genuinely baffling. But the details of the case and the characterizations here fit too neatly into a framework of sociological clichés.
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