- Network: HULU
- Series Premiere Date: Jul 23, 2025
Critic Reviews
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This show has a salient point to make, but can’t quite seem to get there organically. Maybe those last four episodes will get us there — or maybe we have to dream up a different world ourselves.
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In the end, Wash comes to realize that it’s up to him to create the life and world he wants for himself. It’s just a shame that the one he inhabits onscreen cannot entirely live up to the one on the page.
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Washington Black comes with plenty of potential and, as an exercise in world-building, it is rich and appealing. But, unlike the Cloud Cutter, this is a creation that never takes flight. The hats really are lovely, but they are just not enough.
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The visual and melodramatic pleasures of “Washington Black” are too often clouded by the haze of feel-good affirmation; the show’s ending, in particular, is a master class in betraying the spirit of your material. Wash takes to the air, but the show remains earthbound.
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Washington Black underestimates younger viewers. Its hero is too heroic when the story demands it (he is stoical, a genius and even a dab hand with watercolours) and then suddenly too fallible when it doesn’t.
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While the sequences and scenes in Halifax and Barbados are fascinating and detailed, Wash and Titch’s adventures don’t quite hold the same allure.