The Unusuals

Chicago Sun-TimesMary Houlihan

A refreshing dramedy that captures the hard-boiled world of New York City homicide investigators and their twisted sense of humor

Entertainment WeeklyJeff Jensen

The oddball overload bugs at first, but the incredibly likable cast makes The Unusuals unusually promising.

SalonHeather Havrilesky

Look a little closer, though, and what you'll find is a truly strange cop dramedy with lots of sharp dialogue, jocular banter and offbeat scenarios.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

The first episode is entertaining and promising enough that viewers may get excited about seeing the second one.

Los Angeles TimesRobert Lloyd

The cast is excellent, and there's potential here, even though tonight's opening episode, as pilots will, tries a little too hard.

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

Shraeger is played with breezy, cynical wit by Amber Tamblyn (who may have her own secrets; she's looking rather more bosomy than she did a few years back as God's BFF in in "Joan of Arcadia"). And she gets capable backup from a cast that includes Adam Goldberg and Harold Perrineau.

Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall

What The Unusuals lacks in cinematic sheen, it compensates with humor and a more interesting group of characters.

Hollywood ReporterRandee Dawn

That's a lot of eccentricity, but creator/writer Noah Hawley meshes humor and pathos with deft plotting and dialogue.

New York MagazineEmily Nussbaum

Everygirl Amber Tamblyn is miscast as a cop with a fancy Upper East Side pedigree, but the rest of the ensemble is great, including Harold Perrineau as a paranoid cop and Adam Goldberg as his self-destructive partner. Quirky feels like a curse word, tainted forever by the legacy of David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, etc.), but The Unusuals might actually turn the word back into praise.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

Clearly the show is trying to contrast humor with murder, lightening the mood with cat kidnappers and plushie hot dogs. But like too many ABC shows, it pushes the quirkiness too hard.

Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan

The Unusuals doesn’t have the balance between the comedy and the serious stuff right yet, but Terry Kinney lends a welcome acerbic note as the station’s seen-it-all leader, Sgt. Harvey Brown.

New York PostLinda Stasi

The series--a replacement of sorts for "Life On Mars" as the strange, spiritually-infused cop show--definitely has its moments, and they aren't as few and far between as I'd imagined.

PopMattersCynthia Fuchs

It’s not new or challenging or even very strange. It is, however, plenty quirky.

New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley

ABC'S latest police drama, The Unusuals, manages to tap into both the dark tension and the zany absurdity of a cop's life in New York. If you're looking for a show that captures the best of both those worlds, however, call Wednesday night's premiere episode a work-in-progress.

The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley

The Unusuals, which begins on Wednesday, isn’t nearly as thrilling [as "Southland"]. But it isn’t bad, just more predictable.

Time

It's the kind of setting that befits a cop show more focused on characters than cases, and The Unusuals delivers there. The problem is the policing; after one episode, it doesn't really grab me as a cop show yet--partly, perhaps, because the show is so whimsical its stakes don't yet feel real.

VarietyBrian Lowry

The series has assembled a promising cast, including Perrineau, Goldberg and Terry Kinney as the unit's snarling captain. In addition, there are vague hints at more sober storylines to come--if, thus far, little reason to emotionally invest in them.

Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert

The show is neither here nor there, neither amusing nor affecting. It doesn't really call out for further viewing, which is not so unusual at all.

NewsdayVerne Gay

The Unusuals is not a good show; it is a messy, uneven, silly, inconsequential show.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen

The Unusuals offers an odd combo platter of tones that don't allow the show to jell in its premiere episode.

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

Hawley, who cited two of the best cop shows ever, "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue," as models, might want to hold off on the patent application. The one episode I've seen of The Unusuals felt unreal and unoriginal. Too bad, because Hawley's assembled some terrific players to populate his precinct of supposed misfits.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

The series is flat-out tone deaf; a limp drama and a grating, messy misfire as a comedy.