Black Donnellys, The

Kansas City StarAaron Barnhart

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

Chicago Sun-TimesDoug 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 PressMike Duffy

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

New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley

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

People WeeklyTom Gliatto

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

New York MagazineJohn Leonard

What we have here is accomplished and absorbing television.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

It's a swell story, if sometimes grim.

Miami HeraldGlenn 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 SunDavid 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-GazetteRob 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 WeeklyKen 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 ChronicleTim 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 PostLinda 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 NewsEllen Gray

I just couldn't buy in.

SlateTroy 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 ReporterBarry Garron

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

Newark Star-LedgerAlan 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 GlobeMatthew Gilbert

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

Orlando SentinelHal 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-IntelligencerMelanie 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.

VarietyBrian Lowry

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

LA WeeklyRobert Abele

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

SalonHeather 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 TodayRobert 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.

NewsdayVerne 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 GuideMatt Roush

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

Wall Street JournalNancy 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 TribuneMaureen Ryan

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

The New York TimesVirginia Heffernan

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

Los Angeles TimesPaul 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.