Swingtown

TimeJames Poniewozik

It's also, judging by the pilot, flawlessly art-directed, full of well-chosen period music and--for a drama about a country searching for its bearings in its bicentennial year--a lot of fun.

VarietyBrian Lowry

This series about suburban angst circa 1976 exhibits rare depth for the procedural-packed web, and includes plenty of nifty touches, from the pop-song score and "Boogie Nights" fashions to the first-rate cast.

Washington PostTom Shales

It's rather a bold, retro step for CBS to attempt this kind of show in the era of reality television and domestic fights that appear to be actual and spontaneous rather than cooked up by a writer. But the airwaves are so choked with reality that a return to fantasy seems strangely refreshing and, ironically, even more realistic.

Kansas City StarAaron Barnhart

Once you get beyond the show’s homages, both to 1970s style and “Desperate Housewives,” this proves to be a groovy little summer soap opera.

SlateTroy Patterson

The relative tameness of Swingtown makes the unease it provokes more inviting: You tune in to see the bodies and stick around for the minds.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

The show itself, sad to say, is not done well enough to work. But it's not dull, and it's worth watching if only to try to figure out what CBS could have been thinking--beyond, "No one's going to confuse this with NCIS."

The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley

Swingtown has ’70s mystique, but not much mystery.

Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara

Swingtown walks a fine line between being a period piece, down to the pudding cups, baseball shirts and snatches of the old "$10,000 Pyramid," and parody.

Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert

Kelley's fascinating concept--the personal and sexual politics of an open marriage--is stifled by CBS prime-time superficiality and an inability to intimately explore intimate subject matter.

New York PostLinda Stasi

Swingtown could have been great. Instead it's a hit-you-over-the-head production--with product placement and wardrobe so obvious it begs us to scream, "That's so authentic!"--best forgotten.

Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall

The sex is all implied rather than shown, as is much of the drug use. It's a very PG-13 approach to potentially R-rated subject matter--and that's the problem.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen

Swingtown isn't just misguided because it's on the wrong network. The show's bigger problem is that the resident "squares" are much more interesting characters than the swingers at the core.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

Swingtown was created to portray a broad but nuanced picture of '70s suburban America, but it might be too ambitious.

LA WeeklyRobert Abele

Swingtown is far from a great show, but until it feels obligated to give killjoy lip service to the downside of sexual freedom--note the transformation on Molly Parker’s postcoital face at the end of the pilot--here’s hoping it has its chance to be rompish and fun and a pain in the side of standards and practices.

New York MagazineJohn Leonard

Since Swingtown isn’t even peekaboo, much less dirty, I wish I could say that it’s played for laughs. But I don’t know what it’s played for.

NewsdayVerne Gay

Swingtown can't decide whether the '70s were transformative or deformative; there's a distinct ironic edge, applied mostly through the use of music.... But that edge isn't nearly sharp or funny enough (unlike "Weeds"), which tends to muddle the point of view.

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

Sadly, though, there's nothing quite that earthshaking going on in Swingtown, which boasts the same eye for detail that characterizes AMC's early-'60s drama "Mad Men"--from a woman smoking on an airplane to another sipping a Tab--but none of its style.

SalonHeather Havrilesky

Basically, the whole thing is stylish and '70s-sexy but also shallow enough to feel like a less funny, hollowed-out combination of "The Wonder Years" and "Boogie Nights."

Hollywood ReporterBarry Garron

Even skillful performances by its largely unknown cast aren't able to hide the lack of character development and the sense that the people in this series are almost self-parodies.

TV GuideMatt Roush

No one is more than skin-deep, so there’s little in the way of irony or metaphor to disguise the fact that Swingtown is so determined to be shocking it seems a little quaint.

PopMattersMichael Abernethy

With so much going on, one would expect Swingtown to be exciting, but it’s not. Behavior that was scandalous in the ‘70s isn’t today.

Wall Street JournalDorothy Rabinowitz

It has one thing going for it--the essential thing. That is, deft writing that yields the kind of suspense that causes people to want to know what comes next. That's no small achievement for a series whose characters are so entirely devoid of, yes, character--or anything resembling an interesting thought.

The New YorkerNancy Franklin

Swingtown is a little too fond of the seventies to reveal anything about them that we don’t already know.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

It's ugly and bloated, too, bringing back memories of tawdry times, tasteless fashion and terrible music.

Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker

There are vivid reminders of the era's ugly clothes and hairstyles. But the writing is obvious and ham-handed.

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

Kelley's compulsive fascination with erratic eroticism turns everything in Swingtown into hypersexualized sleaze.