For 371 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Lucy Mangan's Scores

Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Frozen Planet II: Season 1
Lowest review score: 20 Lunatics: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 11 out of 371
371 tv reviews
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    You can feel the creators Simon Kinberg and David Weil eager to draw parallels and find resonance with current issues: the fracturing family also in effect become refugees as they attempt to flee to safety; Trevante is a hostile invader about to feel what life is like on the other side of the equation, and so on. Even so, Invasion is a slow burn that threatens to become simply slow.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Lucy Mangan
    Filled with people who really know their anatomy and can parse a couple’s problems at 50 paces, break down their defences at 20 and get them healthily rebuilt, all without breaking a sweat. This is partly because they are intelligent and emotionally literate human beings, and partly because the problems they are dealing with are – at heart – wonderfully simple. ... These six episodes might be the most – not to say the only – truly valuable thing Goop has ever done.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 80 Lucy Mangan
    Think of it as a kind of Gossip Girl with gore and credible characters. ... The whole thing is joyfully addictive, and done with brio and style.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Lucy Mangan
    Nothing here, be it questions or attempted answers, is new. Too much has been said about every aspect of modern marriage and its breakdowns – not least, of course, as a result of Bergman’s groundbreaker – over the last few decades for that to be the goal any more. But they are rarely explored with such style, truth or credibility.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Lucy Mangan
    The writing – though there is in this particularly plot-heavy, season-setting opener less room for the delicate characterisation that customarily leaven the script and make you wring your hands with their deftness and intelligence – remains immaculate. The performances ... remain unimpeachable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Lucy Mangan
    The detail, the tenderness, the authenticity, the brilliant performances make the whole thing both a compelling drama and a potent testimony to the suffering of too many.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    As a programme it is righteously furious about a worthy subject and, as a result, just a little dull. The second episode, Freedom, finds its groove and works much better.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    As a new sci-fi show, it would be fine. As a big-budget, flagship production for Apple it looks like a fine opportunity wasted.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    It is, simply as an apocalypse drama, good enough. And there are, as the series progresses, signs of hope that Yorick will be relegated further into the background, the female characters will come further to the fore, and that it will start to exploit some of the gyno-opportunities offered by the premise. It could just do with getting there a bit faster, that’s all.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    The focus is wider (Jean and Jakob’s is one of the many adult relationships given more attention, and there are more students introduced too) and perhaps as a result the strokes are broader.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    In the opening half things are foggy. Thanks to the performances, however (including Hubert Point-Du Jour as nurse Josh, a vital witness to botched operations), things remain compelling at an individual level.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    For those who found The Terror – with its exploration of powerlessness, isolation and good v evil – too much in a time of powerlessness, isolation and overt battles between good and evil, The North Water is a warm bath. It occasionally shows pretensions to something greater.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Lucy Mangan
    I’m sure the puff nature of the piece will become less obvious as the launch approaches and genuine drama and tensions start to fill the hours. But that doesn’t alter what it is. Everyone’s time and money, all those billions of it, could be better spent.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    Sparking Joy has followed the principle of the book by not messing with the original TV formula.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Lucy Mangan
    The show has lost none of its delicacy or nuance, nor have its makers disturbed its heart and soul – in fact, they have only added to it. All this, and extra Janice too. Quality pum-pum all round.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    The conceit – a happy facade in front of friends and family, bleak realism when she’s “off” – is a good one. ... The problem comes as the series unfolds. ... We end up watching two increasingly unrelated narratives – the better of which keeps getting interrupted by a clunking 90s sitcom, complete with dull storylines about get-rich-quick schemes or the boss coming to dinner that neither illuminate nor complicate Allison’s story, nor create any thematic symbiosis.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Lucy Mangan
    It’s a great achievement that none of this feels worthy or didactic. It feels like a genuine exploration, a dramatised discussion of intergenerational differences and divides that few are seeking to take the heat out of and examine with real interest. And it’s funny.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    There are good, funny lines scattered throughout as you might expect from a Nye script (he most famously gave us Men Behaving Badly but also the darkly flashing gem that was How Do You Want Me?, with Dylan Moran and the late, lamented Charlotte Coleman) but their sudden deployment generally just adds to the sense of unevenness. ... Lumley, Havers and Hawes together though – a shining moment that will do everyone good.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Lucy Mangan
    Matters of agency, courage and cowardice emerge and the story starts to accrue depth along with the superficial puzzle of the kidnapping and who saw what and when. If you can deal with the trifurcated timeline, there’s much to enjoy and admire.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Lucy Mangan
    It all gets odder as it goes on. It’s not (just) that Hilton has only four phrases at her disposal (“So good”, “So bomb”, “Insane”, “So cute”), but that she is such a deadening presence.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    Script-wise, things are woeful. But the rest is great fun. It is another derivative but satisfying franchise that knows exactly what it is doing. Comfort watching in troubled times. Go out and find her.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    There is nothing new or revelatory in this documentary, I suspect, to anyone with a working knowledge of DeLorean or his rise and fall. The overall story, and its ending, is one of the oldest in the world. But it bears retelling – and this is a stylish retelling, at least – if only because we don’t seem to be any closer to learning the story’s many lessons.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    Tattoo Redo manages to sidestep the elephant traps and stay light, breezy and really rather endearing, even before you add the joy of watching people create something from nothing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Lucy Mangan
    The broadening and deepening must have felt like a risk to everyone involved in a show predicated on bringing light comic relief to viewers, and which then became frankly essential to their mental wellbeing. But it’s paid off. They shot and they’ve scored. God bless.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    The series does exactly what you would expect and exactly as well. ... It’s a show about a man and his drooling dog, and superficial emotions are the order of the day. Rinse and repeat for the remaining 11 episodes, plus a season arc about a big case Scott Sr was working on secretly when he died from an apparent heart attack.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    If the whole show doesn’t add up to more than the sum of its parts, it is a lot of parts and Aduba holds them all together and makes them work. It’s worth booking your hours in again.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Lucy Mangan
    Schmigadoon! passes the time harmlessly enough but overall, it is a one-note show and even that is too often flat. Must hit that exclamation mark harder next time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Lucy Mangan
    Bea and Horgan’s chemistry is as glorious as ever. They overlap and underlap perfectly, giving expansive but controlled performances that never take from each other. It is wonderful – indeed it feels almost a privilege – to watch.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Lucy Mangan
    It needs another pass through the laugh factory. A thorough sanding down and a tightening of the plot screws by Mift and a few more squirts of lubricant from old hands such as Goodman and Crystal – whose scenes merely remind us of past glories – could create a vehicle truly fit for comic purpose. Monsters: get to work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Lucy Mangan
    If the film lacked the surprising revelations and investigative deep dives seen in the top echelons of true crime reporting, it should find its place as a sensitive and moving attempt to sketch the outlines of horror and grief.

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