Robert Abele

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L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, TheWrap
For 117 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Robert Abele's Scores

Average review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 The Wire: Season 4
Lowest review score: 10 October Road: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 70 out of 117
  2. Mixed: 31 out of 117
  3. Negative: 16 out of 117
117 tv reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections: Season 1
    The title “Kill Chain” comes from a military term for how an enemy clarifies its attack steps. Though clearly meant to inject paranoid gravity to an already persuasive argument about the perils inherent in electronic voting systems, the movie is more helpful when giving voice to what experts say is the only true solution: the simple physical record of a paper ballot. ... Swift and blunt.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal
    A compellingly woven true-crime primer that serves both the gist of what happened while exploding your consciousness over what needs to be done in the future.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Dirty John: Season 1
    Glossy and well-acted, its transfer from your daily commute’s most suspenseful listening stretch ever to serviceable wine-and-laundry-folding companion show feels, all in all, a smooth one.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Watergate: Season 1
    Ferguson’s film is still a rivetingly thorough account of what took down Richard Milhous Nixon, and plenty of others in his administration. ... While the naturally propulsive timeline, archival footage and talking heads provide a compelling narrative, Ferguson’s use of actors to reenact the Oval Office conversations captured secretly by Nixon are an odd distraction.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Dice Undisputed: Season 1
    If you’re a regular of the cable channel’s open-surveillance portraits of damaged-goods celebrity — Breaking Bonaduce, Being Bobby Brown and Shooting Sizemore — you will inevitably tune in to Dice Undisputed for delusion, not inspiration. And there it is in the first episode.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    In Treatment: Season 1
    Oddly enough, as much as I like In Treatment and its theatrically deft interplays, it doesn't get off to a great start with its Monday patient.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Abele
    Heroes: Season 1
    The show is too diffuse, hokey and self-consciously portentous to suggest suspenseful possibility.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Notes from the Underbelly: Season 1
    It’s a more-than-solid cast, which is half the battle.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Abele
    Night Stalker: Season 1
    This is one decidedly unfrightening resurrection of the Night Stalker.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    The Hills: Season 1
    Insanely watchable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Five Days: Season 1
    What's unusually gripping about Five Days is that its tension isn’t derived from depicting the majority of its cast as shifty-eyed suspects, but rather as floundering, flawed human beings unsure of how to move on with their lives.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Abele
    Painkiller Jane: Season 1
    Not helping matters... are the wretched dialogue, indiscriminately moody lighting, stock characters (gruff boss, dweeby tech guy, ripped chauvinist colleague), and crushing lack of suspense.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Worst Week: Season 1
    Even though it's obviously well-made and Bornheimer has a flinty wit that prevents him from being just another Ben Stiller–ish sap....if I'm being truthful, the original British version of this series was funnier.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Everybody Hates Chris: Season 1
    So far, Everybody Hates Chris has felt like a textbook example of how you fold a comedian’s sensibility into a familiar TV genre.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Eureka: Season 1
    It starts jumping in different directions so quickly that it loses focus.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story
    Filth too often comes off like a strained attempt at reversing the dynamic of a Marx Brothers movie, with Whitehouse the silly, charming agitator and Greene the insufferable aesthete foil with steam blowing out of his ears.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Life on Mars (UK): Season 1
    Don’t mistake the slick-but-not-stupid Life on Mars for brain-bending sci-fi or Austin Powers-style farce. Aside from the psychological stress of its star... this is actually at heart an old-school cops-and-robbers show, with that dash of Twilight Zone to give it 21st-century cachet.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Abele
    John Adams: Season 1
    A rich, intelligent and often moving miniseries.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Tell Me You Love Me: Season 1
    Although it manages to be suspenseful about the journey of its jumbled characters, it is an unrelenting examination of the search for the hidden recipe of me, you and us that makes for a strong marriage, and that's something you ultimately have to steel yourself for in a weekly series.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    24: Season 6
    Where does that leave Season 6, then, when the show has stemmed major disasters for five years running and its intensity level of choice is 11? As well-oiled as before, actually, and, judging from the four hours airing over Sunday and Monday, unafraid of edging its parallel-universe America ever closer toward a world war nightmare of mass hysteria.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Gavin and Stacey: Season 1
    [A] richly observed, mirthful series.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Drive: Season 1
    Drive quickly asserts itself as an enjoyably diverting peel-out — brainless but not stupid, a well-stirred conspiracy/action mixture in keeping with Fox’s no-seat-belts hits 24 and Prison Break.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Eli Stone: Season 1
    Eli Stone is another lawyer hour disguised as feel-good rehabilitation fluff, with Eli now compelled to use his sharklike courtroom mojo to take up the causes of wronged underdogs against the kinds of heartless corporate clients his blue-chip firm typically represents.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Abele
    3 Lbs.: Season 1
    3 Lbs. seems like microwaved leftovers.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    The Riches: Season 1
    This is a meaty show about the complex allure of easy wealth and the traps it sets for one’s personal morality.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Abele
    Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Season 1
    Secret Diary of a Call Girl is the kind of hotly lit, coldly stylized dreck that purports to be classy, high-minded softcore but is actually as witless and dreary as, well, paid-for jollies.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Raising the Bar: Season 1
    The series seems to always eschew Hollywood-style courtroom theatrics and gotcha moments for resolutions that seem truer because they involve mistakes, bad timing, compromises, dubious ethics and sweated-out smarts.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Threshold: Season 1
    This is a series about whip-smart heroes, with an outbreak to contain each week, usually involving quick action, rapid analysis and fast wit.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Rollergirls: Season 1
    [An] exciting, interesting series.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    The Mentalist: Season 1
    Because as much as Baker's suavely sly version of a gotcha artist is a welcome addition, thanks to a few not-so-hidden laws of character-actor placement, you'll guess the pilot scenario's killer before anybody else.
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