- Network: Lifetime , HULU , LIFETIME-TW
- Series Premiere Date: Jun 1, 2015
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Critic Reviews
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One of the fascinating tricks that UnReal has managed to pull off is utilizing the tropes of the reality TV format to drag viewers even deeper into their personal investment in these characters.
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UnREAL is a great many things, including a dark satire of reality TV, a satisfyingly comedic soap opera, and the ultra-rare female antihero drama.
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UnReal is simultaneously a very dark satire of reality TV and a soap opera that breathes new life into old tropes by placing them in this very familiar, modern setting. The story of the making of a show like this is ultimately far more exciting than the shows themselves seem to be.
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The show could easily devolve into a mere cruel soap, its own guilty pleasure. But it makes one crucial move: it cultivates sympathy for the bachelorettes.... UnREAL allows the women to be individuals, vulnerable and distinct.
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UnReal is darker than a locked box inside a lightproof cube sitting on the bottom of the ocean at midnight. It is an ice cream sundae laced with ipecac, delectable and poisonous all at once.
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The wickedly addictive (if typographically annoying) UnREAL [has] far more heft and purpose than its premise might seem to contain, is a show within a show.
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Though UnReal's purpose is to skewer the fakeness and calculation behind reality shows like The Bachelor, it really does something more important: It humanizes these archetypes.
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It matters less whether UnREAL is accurate than whether it is just true enough to provide a foundation for credible drama--and it very much does.
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Lifetime has one of the most aggressively interesting dramas in recent memory. There's borderline sociopathy, true human frailty, workplace strife, family drama, romance, social commentary, and a shred of satire.
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The sad thing--but also the thing that makes this show so compelling--is that the contestants care so much about winning this hideous, spirit-killing show. It’s that paradox that gives UnREAL its true soul.
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It’s a thought-provoking soap opera with love triangles and mother issues. Although some of the plot points are too clichéd (Quinn’s affair with her married boss, played by Craig Bierko, is a predictable one), the show moves along at an engaging, entertaining pace.
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A savvy, acerbic look at how the reality-TV sausage gets made, with all its inherent manipulation, and collateral damage be damned.
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UnREAL is way over-the-top and trashy, but in an entertaining way.
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UnREAL is clearly exaggerated for shock value, but it somehow feels more true to life than those "happily ever after" love stories the originals serve up.
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UnReal is most enjoyable when its nasty and least convincing when its doling out soap-opera subplots. [8 Jun 2015, p.13]
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UnReal is as much a show about the compromises people make to earn a living as it is an insider's guide.
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The show’s contestant characters are the expected mix of types found in a reality show, although Unreal tries to ground them in specificity that defies TV stereotypes, which works better with some of the women than with others.
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UnREAL is melodramatic and moralizing. But it’s also, in its first three episodes, pretty good: dark, deft and empathetic.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 97 out of 109
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Mixed: 6 out of 109
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Negative: 6 out of 109
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Jun 9, 2015
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Jun 10, 2015
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Aug 4, 2015