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Black Donnellys, The
SERIES: NBC, Monday 10:00p (60 minutes)


8.6

based on 30 reviews
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based on 200 votes
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Get more information on this show at TV.com.

FILM:

Crash

Official Show Site

Starring Kirk Acevedo, Thomas Guiry, Billy Lush, Keith Nobbs, Michael Stahl-David, Jonathan Tucker, and Olivia Wilde

From "Crash" director and writers Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco comes this organized crime drama centering on an Irish-American family in New York City.

GENRE(S):	Crime, Drama
CREATED BY:	Paul Haggis Robert Moresco
FIRST AIR DATE:	February 26, 2007

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart

It feels like Haggis and Moresco are picking up right where “EZ Streets” left off.

Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman

These tall tales flow into a stream of consciousness. That's good. The acting is convincing. That's good. The Irish stuff is heavy-handed. That's bad.

Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy

A terrific series pilot that gives off little echoes of everything from "GoodFellas" to "The Departed."

New York Daily News David Hinckley

All the Haggis-Moresco touches are here, from the imaginative choices and uses of music to the sly surprises and twisted humor.

People Weekly Tom Gliatto

It gets an unexpected freshness from a young cast. [5 Mar 2007, p.37]

New York Magazine John Leonard

What we have here is accomplished and absorbing television.

Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm

It's a swell story, if sometimes grim.

Miami Herald Glenn Garvin

Where The Sopranos slices and dices American culture from a thousand different angles and The Brotherhood explores the shadowy nexus between crime and politics, The Black Donnellys sticks mainly to the vices, virtues and vicissitudes of family.

Baltimore Sun David Zurawik

Those viewers who can come to terms with Joey's voice will find themselves richly rewarded by the powerful performances of Tucker as Tommy Donnelly and Olivia Wilde as Jenny Reilly.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen

If you enjoy complex, murky dramas about morally ambiguous characters, played by a talented cast of newcomers, then enjoy "The Black Donnellys" while it lasts.

Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker

Haggis equates the slow revealing of character and plot with classy writing; you'll probably experience it as stuff you can see coming a mile away.

San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman

[It] ultimately succumbs to being an inferior story on a broadcast network that can't even remotely match two far better cable series ["The Sopranos" and "Brotherhood"].

New York Post Linda Stasi

While "Studio 60" is/was an annoying, insidery and smug series about the inside doings of the annoyingly smug cast of a "Saturday Night Live-ish" show, "Donnellys" is the annoying, insidery and smug series about the doings of the Donnelly brothers, low-level thugs in Hell's Kitchen in New York City.

Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray

I just couldn't buy in.

Slate Troy Patterson

The next four episodes are nowhere near as patient and controlled as that cinematic pilot, but, man, are they Irish: the wakes, the neon shamrock, the epigraphs from W.B. Yeats and D.P. Moynihan. And the show keeps this magnificent blarney up even as it swipes half its ideas from the playbooks of Scorsese and The Godfather.

Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron

Maybe this show would be more compelling if the Donnellys were a little less black and a little more gray.

Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall

If "Donnellys" wants a shot at doing better than "Studio 60" in its timeslot, it needs at least a hint of a larger-than-life figure.

Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert

Ultimately "The Black Donnellys" pales in the light of its lofty influences.

Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker

The Black Donnellys is not top of the world... or the second coming of The Sopranos. The new drama is old wine poured into fancy, contemporary bottles.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland

It sounds like the kind of "keeping up with HBO" series Showtime would do, except the premium cable channel already aired an Irish mobster series, "Brotherhood." And it had richer characters and superior plotting.

Variety Brian Lowry

[A] grim, brooding, utterly muddled crime series.

LA Weekly Robert Abele

Unfortunately, the young actors on display aren’t compelling enough to make us care much beyond their sometimes stupidly self-induced crises.

Salon Heather Havrilesky

While "The Sopranos" and "Brotherhood" make it look easy, "The Black Donnellys" makes it excruciatingly clear just how difficult it is to tell a soulful story about criminals.

USA Today Robert Bianco

You'll eventually be able to tell one gun-toting, ax-wielding character from another. You're just not likely to develop a desire to spend time with them.

Newsday Verne Gay

"Donnellys" creaks and sighs, moans and slumps, and ambles along like a world-weary cliche, unable or unwilling to lift its head above the humdrum banality to which it has been consigned.

TV Guide Matt Roush

To say these guys are stereotypes does insult to the clichés they clumsily represent.

Wall Street Journal Nancy DeWolf Smith

As they stumble from one brutal act to another, accompanied by a hip rock soundtrack, we're not watching dramatic art; it's more like "Dawson's Creek" for psychopaths.

Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan

This pretentious mishmash is a paint-by-numbers Irish-American "Sopranos" ripoff.

The New York Times Virginia Heffernan

Like “Crash,” “The Black Donnellys” is more of a lecture than a drama.

Los Angeles Times Paul Brownfield

NBC sent out five episodes; I sat through three before throwing the DVD on the Donate to Public Library pile. I would like to apologize in advance to the library.

The average user rating for this tv show is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 200 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Empty Head gave it a10:
I love this show! I wish NBC would bring it back. One of my favorite things is the strong connection many of the fans have made trying to save it. I hope they can get some closure.

bhkg ghlkjh gave it a10:
This show is awesome the best in the world. I would pay to watch it!!!

Alex A gave it a9:
A true original.

Alfred R. gave it a9:
Great show To bad it's off the air!

Rollie S. gave it a10:
The Black Donnellys is down right fantastic. NBC is the home of crappy reality TV, and never deserved such an amazing show. Everyone I've ever shown this series to has been hooked from the first episode. Which ever network decides to pick this series up is not only smart, but absolutely gunna be a hero for me.

Sean F. gave it a10:
I think i enjoyed this even more than the sopranos. Fantastic.

Daliah H gave it a9:
I am a big fan of The Black Donnellys and like a lot of others I was quite disappointed to see the show cut short even before the first season was over. Some friends and I used to get together every week to watch this show Monday nights. I really wish that the show didn't get canceled. I felt as though the show was doing really well. Everyone I know had positive things to say about it and the ones that didn't had nothing to say because they had never even heard of the show. I random l found the show and when I did I fell in love with it. I think that if more advertisement and promotions about the show were done then the size of the audience would have grown dramatically. Since I bought the show on DVD, I've shown the series to many friends who had never heard of it and it left them wanting more. I think that this whole ordeal was a situational dilemma and would've worked out with time. I still have hope that it will be back on t.v. sometime.

Black Donnellys, The SERIES: NBC, Monday 10:00p (60 minutes)

Black Donnellys, The
SERIES: NBC, Monday 10:00p (60 minutes)