• Network: CBS
  • Series Premiere Date: Sep 16, 1987
Season #: 4, 3, 2, 1
Metascore
56

Mixed or average reviews - based on 7 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 7
  2. Negative: 2 out of 7
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Critic Reviews

  1. Newsday
    Reviewed by: Marvin Kitman
    Jul 12, 2013
    100
    Had something special about it from the start: the mood, the writing, the acting. All the great series establish a mis-en-scene, a special environment that you can cut with a knife. I felt I was in a different place watching "Wiseguy." [30 May 1988]
  2. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Steve Sonsky
    Feb 5, 2014
    90
    It's a simple idea with deceptively intriguing permutations. Plus, it's extremely well- made, to boot -- if, occasionally, inevitably, cliche-crazed. But hey -- it is TV. [16 Sept 1987, p.D1]
  3. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Clifford Terry
    Feb 5, 2014
    80
    Coming from Cannell, Wiseguy is, of course, all sweat and swagger, bullets and babes, breeziness and bravado. Men's bowling teams are advised to schedule their nights around this one.[16 Sept 1987, p.7C]
  4. Reviewed by: John J. O'Connor
    Feb 5, 2014
    60
    Mr. Wahl has the kind of brooding good looks that could attract ratings - that is, if the public is ready for still another blood-and-guts romp on television.
  5. San Diego Union-Tribune
    Reviewed by: Robert P. Laurence
    Feb 5, 2014
    40
    The cliches just keep on coming, from crooked cops to a mobster's innocent daughter in law school (at UCLA, no less) to those great, great lines: "Come on, Sonny, let's go. [16 Sept 1987, p.F-9]
  6. Reviewed by: Howard Rosenberg
    Feb 5, 2014
    30
    The notion that a two-bit pug with Geraldo Rivera's swagger could work his way into the highest echelons of organized crime is absurd, but consistent with the rest of the story. It's a tossup which has more holes, the plot or the bodies that pile up here in one of those all-purpose, everyone-gets-blown-away-who-deserves-to-get-blown-away endings...With any luck, this show is history.
  7. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Tom Shales
    Feb 5, 2014
    20
    Wiseguy deposits blank-faced lump Ken Wahl onto the screen for a preposterous and desultory crime saga about a sullen undercover cop who infiltrates the mob and will spend each episode almost getting found out, but miraculously squeaking through. [16 Sept 1987, p.D1]