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- AMC
- Aug 11, 2013
- AMC
- Aug 11, 2013
- AMC
- Aug 11, 2013
- AMC
- Aug 11, 2013
Where to Watch
Season Episodes
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 27 Critic Reviews
60
37% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
59% Mixed
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 27 Critic Reviews
60
37% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
59% Mixed
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
For those looking for yet another quality show for their Sunday nights, Low Winter Sun soars high.
Not since HBO’s The Wire left the air five years ago has a television series combined urban decay and moral decrepitude in such stark--and yet compulsively watchable--terms.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 82 User Ratings
7.1
68% Positive
56 Ratings
56 Ratings
18% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
13% Negative
11 Ratings
11 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 82 User Ratings
7.1
68% Positive
56 Ratings
56 Ratings
18% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
13% Negative
11 Ratings
11 Ratings
Starts slow and may turn off viewers who are expecting a cliche cops and robbers tale. Expect, instead a tragic tale straight out of Shakespeare. In the last 60 seconds, the long train ride hits the wall in the most memorable scene I’ve seen on the small screen.
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SEASON 1
This is going to be my first review here, but there is a good reason why I pick "Low Winter Sun" for that...
The series provides a lot of really interesting characters (Frank Agnew, his now drug-addicted friend who was supposed to be a cop too...), but also the sceneries where those characters walk/drive along or meet show the city of Detroit, a city that is obviously going to the ground in many corners - but all that together with a story that gets told with exactly the right tempo took my breath away many many times, and its a pity that this series does not go on after only 10 episodes, cause it really deserves so much more than this.
If you are a fan of series like The Wire...: you´ll love this one and its atmosphere!! And I hope Mark Strong will be seen again in (at least) a new series soon!
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SEASON 1
There's lots of snarling, lots of talk about what men are willing to do to protect or hurt one another, and yet in the early going it feels empty, like a joke being retold by someone who can't remember exactly how the guy he heard it from delivered it. The performances are terrific, though (James especially), and Dickerson shoots the Detroit locations in a fashion that captures both the beauty of the architecture and the absolute bleakness of the setting.
Low on initial appeal and likewise short on originality, it’s a bleak ’n’ grim undertaking that just doesn’t seem built for the long haul.
Sun aspires to the breadth if not the depth of The Wire. But it's so self-conscious in its existential misery, lacking the leavening humor and humanity of a modern classic like Breaking Bad, that it often feels more punishing than provocative.
It comes off as a straining, overly serious wannabe.
It tries to make up for what it lacks in originality with unending bleakness--Malick shots of a mangy dog running through the streets with a rat in his maw, characters who never smile--as if being relentlessly somber were proof of quality. The results are beyond claustrophobic. All the characters want out. So did I.
Have been very impressed with this show since it came out. Very impressed with Mark Strong and the whole cast. They have done an excellent job with the writing and the interweaving story. There is such a conflict between right and wrong that it has been quite exciting watching each character struggle with their actions. The rotten and collapsed side of Detroit is still amazing and shocking to me, however above it all, people keep going. The whole Detroit backdrop gives the series a unique feel and look which I find quite engaging and overall adds to the success of the show.
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SEASON 1
Really nice Pilot episode, and the acting was really solid, especially from Mark Strong and Lennie James. I can see this series turning out really nice.
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SEASON 1
This show focuses too much on using "grim and grimy" as a method of storytelling. The producers even use a bluish-grey film filter to wash out any color (fans of the now-cancelled "the killing" are familiar with this technique). Grim depression is fine, but unsympathetic characters make the grim experience feel more tedious than it should. Everything is grey.
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SEASON 1
Who would care to watch a show that fails so poorly in the development of the characters? If feels like the show started in the middle of the season.
The storyline has action and drama but who cares since we have not been allowed to know who these people are. Do they really expect to work backward with the character development?
Everything that makes shows like Homeland, Breaking Bad, and Dexter great is missing from Low Winter Sun. The name of the show is cool but the show itself falls flat it's a waste of my time.
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SEASON 1
People who watch ‘Low Winter Sun’ fall into one of two categories: those who enjoy the show because they like Mark Strong, and those who like Mark Strong but don’t enjoy the show. It starts well. The first episode opens in a dark room lit with candles (I have no idea why), an exotic leitmotif (which works despite its incongruity) and a close up of a weeping Frank Agnew staring at the camera. It’s a powerful scene that provokes instant sympathy for the protagonist, and justifies what he’s about to do. Unfortunately, in the episodes that follow, LWS conscientiously unravels both the sympathy and the heady atmosphere it set up in the first two minutes.
This show is giving viewers what it THINKS they want (a white middle-class antihero with no hair and some personal problems, a glimpse at a criminal underworld, stuff about drugs) without truly understanding what it was that made shows like Breaking Bad so appealing. LWS is too dark, too joyless, and MUCH too sordid. There is an excess of drugs, alcohol, prostitutes and (bizarrely) toilets. People talk about toilets, they use toilets, they shove people’s heads INTO toilets AFTER they have used them and the prostitutes FILM themselves using toilets. The whole fictional Detroit scene LWS sets up is so dark, so dirty, that it left me wondering why any of these people would stay in those jobs in that city. We were promised a theme of redemption, but I haven’t been able to find it.
The story is both overwrought and underdeveloped, with an awkward surplus of Serious Acting to compensate for the deficiencies of the plot. I wasn’t interested at all in the B-story with Damon and Maya, David Costabile is wasted here, and while I could happily watch Athena Karkanis reading from the phonebook, even she can’t lend the story some much needed beauty and moral relief from the relentless thematic and visual darkness of the show. I’d love to see Mark Strong in a sympathetic leading role. This isn’t it.
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SEASON 1
