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Critic Reviews
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As palace-bound melodramas go, Victoria is perfectly easy to watch, as long as you don’t mind that it never for a second feels as if you were watching something that could actually have taken place in the mid-19th century.
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Coming on the heels of Netflix’s superior British period drama “The Crown,” Victoria is a bit of a comedown, but it’s not bad, merely familiar and expected.
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It’s just the tale of a young woman finding her way and managing her personal life where, for better or worse, her being a queen often feels like an afterthought.
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The result is a miniseries that’s easy on the eyes and generally more interesting when capable actors like Jenna Coleman, who plays Victoria, and Rufus Sewell, as her advisor Lord Melbourne, imbue the dialogue and character psyches with more depth than the scripts provide. Subplots about secondary and tertiary characters, which feel like castoffs from lazier “Downton Abbey” seasons, frustrate for a variety of reasons, not least because they’re executed with a lack of flair and originality.
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As costume drama, Victoria will likely be a crowd-pleaser, but here's hoping next season finds a more fulfilling balance. [2-15 Jan 2017, p.18]
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Moving uncertainly in fits and starts, the handsomely produced Victoria nonetheless gleams with first-rate performances. The overall storytelling execution is poor, but individual scenes can be quite rich in detail and nuance.
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Predictable to the bone--and at times maddeningly redundant--Victoria too often feels like a period drama about the making of a period drama, rather than a deep, authentic breath of rarefied air.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 30 out of 48
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Mixed: 10 out of 48
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Negative: 8 out of 48
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Feb 1, 2017
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Jan 19, 2017