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- Amazon Instant Video
- Apr 19, 2013
- Amazon Instant Video
- Apr 19, 2013
- Amazon Instant Video
- Apr 19, 2013
- Amazon Instant Video
- Apr 19, 2013
Where to Watch
Season Episodes
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
68
61% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
39% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
68
61% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
39% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Alpha House is satire at its most blistering and biting, delivered by a master of the trade: Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau, whose contempt for political cynicism, venality and hypocrisy doesn't keep the jaded protagonists of this bawdy, brazen comedy from being great company.
Amazon’s Alpha House is a polished comedy--not a game-changer, but the kind of show a premium service should be happy to have.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 35 User Ratings
6.8
77% Positive
27 Ratings
27 Ratings
3% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
20% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 35 User Ratings
6.8
77% Positive
27 Ratings
27 Ratings
3% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
20% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
This series is brilliant satire. What makes it so effective, very funny, and yet absolutely interesting, is that it is very close to the truth in depicting the political class. The actors are perfect; the dialogue is witty, clever, and, frequently they deliver a perfect caricature of the speech, attitudes, and unwitting hypocrisy of so many politicians. Highly recommended.
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SEASON 1
This show is certainly dry in it's humor, but it is hilarious. John Goodman and Clark Johnson are absolutely hilarious. The show is also very liberal. If you are a liberal and a political junkie, you'll probably like it. I can't imagine many conservatives would like it, and I wonder if that is affecting the user score for this show.
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SEASON 1
The writing is smart, the characters are amusing, the cameos (including one from Bill Murray, and another from Stephen Colbert as himself) are entertaining, and the political commentary is as pointed as you might suspect.
Mr. Trudeau has a feel for not just political hypocrisy but also character, and this cast manages to bring life and even some charm to these Capitol Hill caricatures. Alpha House is not yet as sharply honed as “Veep,” but it could get there; it certainly has plenty of material to work with.
Another of those amusing but not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny sitcoms that are so popular on premium cable channels.
The show is so tight--maybe too tight--that it starts to choke on its own power-tie premise in the first three episodes.
Alpha House hits a few notes of inspired satire--like the bowl of American flag lapel pins the senators keep on the kitchen counter--but Trudeau’s been more biting and much funnier elsewhere, past TV efforts like Tanner ’88 and the malaise-infected Doonesbury Special included.
This is a great show, with 2 major let downs. The first is that each episode is much too short. Politics is a lot more involved than 20+ minutes can allow for. Second would have to be the poor attempts at tying all of the episodes together. We get it, you are supposed to take more than one episode to run for and win elected office but surely we can spend some time doing a little more political fighting. Other than those two small complaints its a brilliant and thanks to John Goodman funny show.
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SEASON 1
Watched all four episodes so far and enjoyed them. I am a die hard liberal so the hypocrisy of the conservative characters is hilarious to me and John Goodman is always great. I have found some of the characters to be a bit overly broad or too close to caricature on occasion, though. The entire thing is worth watching for the huge star cameo during first few moments of the pilot episode.
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SEASON 1
I had high hopes for this show, hoping for a lighter 'House of Cards' driven by Gary Trudeau's talent. Those hopes quickly crashed.
There were moments in this show that were good that were drowned in the larger cringe-worthy abyss. The scenes that featured Clark Johnson were often interesting and felt like they were realistic. John Goodman is capable of being very funny when he is well directed (Inside Llewyn Davis) but when he is not as in this show he's too over the top. The scenes involving Marc Consuelos and especially Matt Malloy were like actors trapped in a bad Saturday Night Live sketch.
The writing for this show is awful. There is little subtlety and little wit **** Doonesbury comic strip, just cheap laughs and retread pokes at cardboard politicians, something even Doonesbury lapses into at times. The politicians happen to all be Republican, and as ThinkProgress points out, "One of the dullest decisions in the original pilot of Alpha House was to make all members of the house Republicans, and to make them all risible." But the bigger mistake is not to make the characters actual people. That doesn't mean they have to be likable (again, see Llweyn Davis), just flesh them out some.
If you're the kind of person who laughs at any joke that makes fun of Republicans or Conservatives is funny then this show might be for you, but if you're the kind of person who is empathetic to diverse viewpoints and appreciates intelligent comedy then don't waste your time.
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SEASON 1
Great TV series can be made about politics as long as both sides get equal treatment. The West Wing despite being very left wing for the most part usually showed the Republicans to be just as smart and capable as the Democrats. Likewise in Parks and Recreation both the statists and the libertarians are both massively over the top charactertures.
But in Alpha House you get the Republicans from Parks and Rec and the Democrats from The West Wing. The series wastes no time in its ham fisted demonization of republicans, who right from the start are introduced as racist, ****, stupid, lazy and grossly hypocritical. It does stop short of making them evil (although that is clearly Amazons opinion in commissioning the series) but it does have a Democrat explain that all Republicans are evil for the viewers in episode 2.
It’s a shame, it is an interesting premise, that could have appealed to a broad base of viewers, if only it treated all politicians and both parties to the same treatment. Instead we are left with a comedy targeted only at very tribal lefties, for whom seeing Republicans be stupid is sufficient alone for a laugh. The problem is if you’re not really political either way like me your left with a comedy that just isn’t funny. It’s just a very very polarised and blunt hatchet job.
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SEASON 1
