Wicked City
ABC | Release Date: October 27, 2015
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
33
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
12
Negative:
16
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Reason.comGlenn GarvinOct 28, 2015
Season 1 Review: The show's intricate plotting and its complex female characters—the desperately ambitious McClaren, the angel-faced, black-hearted Beaumontaine—make it fascinating despite its flaws. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalNancy DeWolf SmithOct 23, 2015
Season 1 Review: To judge by the first episode, Wicked City compensates for some pedestrian dialogue and only-on-TV coincidences with bouts of genuinely scary intensity, and doesn’t default to eruptions of gore. Read full review
58
The Lincoln Journal StarJeff KorbelikOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: I found little interesting in Wicked City until Erika Christensen became a part of it halfway through the pilot. Read full review
58
Uncle BarkyEd BarkOct 22, 2015
Season 1 Review: It’s still the usual story of women being victimized and mutilated. Wicked City otherwise is no great shakes in the script department, with Sisto’s Roth spitting out too many lines from a well-worn playbook. Read full review
50
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: In the absence of a believable or captivating story, Wicked tries to shock, but this is broadcast commercial TV. Ryan Murphy can and does more in two minutes on basic cable than Wicked­ can achieve in an hour. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Wicked City probably is a tired genre piece. (How's that for critical certitude?) But it's just possible that in future episodes, the flirtation between Kent and Betty may yield worthwhile television. Read full review
50
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: It’s not a terrible show for fans of crime dramas but it’s not great either, occupying the same mushy middle ground as summer’s “Aquarius” on NBC. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushOct 22, 2015
Season 1 Review: The cops, including Jeremy Sisto as a homicide veteran who loathes his new partner and cheats on his wife, are so generic they almost vanish in to the smog. [26 Oct - 8 Nov 2015, p.15]
42
Newark Star-LedgerVicki HymanOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: This is a conventional crime show draped in period trappings when it should be steeped in the era. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubJoshua AlstonOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Were the show conceived around Betty, making her the actor as opposed to a damaged innocent drawn into Kent’s web, the show would be a much more interesting show. As it is, Wicked City doesn’t have much to offer except for more gratuitous violence against women. But it’s got a great beat, and you can dance to it. Read full review
40
We Got This CoveredMitchel BroussardOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: There are potential bright spots in how creator Steven Baigelman will handle the murderous partnership of Kent and Betty in the next nine episodes, but the show’s inept edginess and dull tone resoundingly guarantee that it won’t exactly be worthwhile. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesRobert LloydOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Apart from some subtle work by Christensen, the series doesn't have much of interest to offer or fresh to say. Read full review
40
The New York TimesNeil GenzlingerOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: Betty may turn out to be the saving grace in a show that otherwise might fall victim to serial-killer fatigue.... But he real issue for this series is whether viewers will tolerate its tone. The premiere is drenched in an unpalatable sensationalism reminiscent of “Stalker,” the canceled CBS series from last season that was widely criticized for its voyeuristic, often misogynistic conceit. Fans of the early 1980s, if there are any, may like revisiting that era--the show, especially its soundtrack, never goes more than a few minutes without reminding you what the time period is. Read full review
40
Boston GlobeSarah RodmanOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: Given that the show is trying sell the real or perceived glamour, sleaze, decadence, and danger of this moment in time, the overall lukewarm feeling of the look and dialogue is disappointing. It could be any old police procedural. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Margaret LyonsOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Westwick's sleazy preening is fun for a little while, and Farmiga's giving way more to her determined-reporter role than is written, but that does not an entire show make. The biggest sin here isn't blow-job murder. It's how boring that blow-job murder is. Read full review
30
The WrapMekeisha Madden TobyOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Despite noticeable efforts to play Kent and Betty as wounded, troubled people with murderously kinky bedroom predilections, Westwick and Christensen’s stunted, one-note characters seem better suited as reenactments on an Investigation Discovery true-crime program than a prime-time series. Read full review
30
The Salt Lake TribuneScott D. PierceOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: The most disturbing thing about Wicked City is that it's not unusual. It's not original. It's not particularly interesting. It's just the latest series driven by violence against women. Read full review
30
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen GrayOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: [The pilot] is equal parts unpleasant and uninteresting. Read full review
30
VarietyMaureen RyanOct 23, 2015
Season 1 Review: A trifling and thoroughly inert drama about a murderer who is called “a tragic soul” in the program’s press notes. There is something tragic about Wicked City, but it’s not the lead character. Read full review
25
St. Louis Post-DispatchGail PenningtonOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: The writing is cliched, the characters cartoonish and the action tedious, punctured by bloodshed. Read full review
25
NewsdayVerne GayOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: Any series that calls itself Wicked City is pretty much asking for ridicule ("Sin City" already taken?), but to then go ahead and stuff the sausage with grade A baloney? That, my friends, is a demand. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: There should be more mystery about what makes Betty and Kent tick, but we know too much from the get-go. The psychological transparency of these two destroys whatever potential the show’s concept may have. Read full review
25
USA TodayRobert BiancoOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: The only thing challenging about Wicked City is the effort it takes to sit through it, and the only thing marginally fresh is its effort to up the perversion ante through a female accomplice who likes to squish spiders in her hands and rip the stitches out of old men. Read full review
20
The OregonianKristi TurnquistOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: By the end of the first episode, it's clear that the series is less wicked, than wearisome. Something lousy this way comes. Read full review
16
Entertainment WeeklyJeff JensenOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: It's a profoundly unnecessary, formally cloddish collection of grating cop-show cliches, antiseptically scuzzy nihilism, and just stupid, stupid stupidity, wrapped in cheap, loud nostalgia for the L.A. of the hair-metal '80s. [30 Oct 2015, p.58] Read full review
10
SlateWilla PaskinOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Wicked City is both wan and distasteful, not as gruesome and blood-spattered as it could be, but thematically gross and tired nonetheless. Read full review
10
Yahoo TVKen TuckerOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: [A] sordid enterprise. Read full review
0
The AtlanticDavid SimsOct 27, 2015
Season 1 Review: Wicked City feels especially egregious. It’s a desperate play to be a dark, adults-only story that comes off instead as purely childish. Wicked City is, in short, gross. Read full review
0
The Hollywood ReporterTim GoodmanOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: The tone-deaf play for major league issues in a drama is recognizable for the disaster it is within mere minutes.... You shouldn’t bother with any of it. Read full review
0
Washington PostHank StueverOct 26, 2015
Season 1 Review: It’s violent in a dumb, done-before, tediously psychosexual way. Read full review
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