Manhattan: Season 1

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 99 Ratings

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7.8

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7.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 99 Ratings

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Season Details & Credits

WGN America | Season Premiere Date: July 27, 2014

Summary: A group of scientists including Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey), Charlie Isaacs (Ashley Zukerman), Col. Alden Cox (Mark Moses), and Glen Babbit (Daniel Stern), along with their wives, settle in the New Mexico desert to begin work on the Manhattan project in this drama created and written by Sam Shaw.

Creator: Sam Shaw

Genre(s): Drama, Science

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Season 1 Episodes

tbd
S1:E13. Perestroika
Air Date: October 19, 2014
tbd
S1:E12. The Gun Model
Air Date: October 12, 2014
tbd
S1:E11. Tangier
Air Date: October 5, 2014

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Jeff Korbelik

Aug 11, 2014

This is the best new show of the summer. Read full review

Uncle Barky Ed Bark

Jul 29, 2014

John Benjamin Hickey’s point man performance leads the way, with his character’s demons and dilemmas already etched like fissures in his face. Carrying the weight of the world can be heavy lifting. Manhattan so far shows every sign of being able to shoulder the load. Read full review

Kevin Fallon

Jul 27, 2014

In a summer that’s offered new programs that pretty much all sit on the spectrum from “silly, but still curious” (Extant, The Strain) on one end to “just plain silly” (Dating Naked) on the other, Manhattan is the most grown up, worth-watching new series we have. Read full review

Sara Smith

Jul 27, 2014

Every time the 1943 of Manhattan begins to feel like 2014, it returns to the nostalgia of movies like “The Right Stuff,” where brains and grit make the peace, back to a time when America trusted its fate to the smartest guys we could find. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine Matt Roush

Jul 27, 2014

WGN America's bold new period drama Manhattan goes even further [than AMC's Mad Men], eschewing the romantic veneer altogether in a gritty story of scientific mavericks operating in extreme circumstances. Read full review

David Wiegand

Jul 27, 2014

Manhattan brings legitimate class to WGN's nascent original content project. Read full review

David Hiltbrand

Jul 27, 2014

Manhattan is awfully overwrought, stocked with personalities as volatile as the radioactive isotopes they're trying to tame. Its melodramatic tone makes it resemble Lifetime's Army Wives more than it does A Beautiful Mind. Read full review

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User Reviews

podaddy

Sep 18, 2014

Favorite show to come along in quite sometime. The negative that expected some sort of "Smithsonian" feel to Manhattan are way off base. Great writing and solid acting carry this show. No complaints here. It doesn't sell itself as a real portrait of those times. It's quite clear it'sFavorite show to come along in quite sometime. The negative that expected some sort of "Smithsonian" feel to Manhattan are way off base. Great writing and solid acting carry this show. No complaints here. It doesn't sell itself as a real portrait of those times. It's quite clear it's fictional, but everything I've read regarding many of the storylines in "Manhattan" are closely, perhaps loosely, tied to many of the things that actually went on at Los Alamos. From the competing scientific teams, to paranoia about spies (and the actual existence of them) to some of the radioactive related sicknesses on site, poor health services, and frustration among families with the secretiveness of everything that went on. Superb show.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

Planck56

Sep 19, 2014

There will always be the naysayers but generally this show is fun and exciting and I am looking for season 2. I love the competitive nature and the conflicts between characters. I also like the irreverent parts that give the characters a more believe quality. .

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

jgrimmster

Aug 13, 2014

Manhattan is easily one of, if not the, best new dramas out. The characters have depth. The acting is superb and the cinematography is great. It also revolves around one of the most captivating secret projects in the history of the United States of America. I highly recommend the show.

5 of 6 users found this helpful51

BogKid

Jul 28, 2014

Though it is obvious that we all know how this story works out in the end, that in no way reduces the suspense and tension in this show. In fact, I feel I must comment that the tension level is so high throughout most of the pilot episode that it cannot be described as a very "enjoyable"Though it is obvious that we all know how this story works out in the end, that in no way reduces the suspense and tension in this show. In fact, I feel I must comment that the tension level is so high throughout most of the pilot episode that it cannot be described as a very "enjoyable" experience. Claustrophobic, dark, a constant air of anxiety all help to describe how I viewed this show. Production values are high. Acting is entirely competent to excellent. WGN has certainly turned in a different direction away from its initial schlocky offering of "Salem".

Did I like "Manhattan"? YES. Did I enjoy it. Not really.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

EludiumQ36

Aug 3, 2014

Sorry, I can't recommend this show except to chicks because it has much more in common with a show like "Army Wives". There are so many problems with this show, the latter being just one: it starts in 1943 so the setting is one in which your father or grandfather grew up, and it's not at allSorry, I can't recommend this show except to chicks because it has much more in common with a show like "Army Wives". There are so many problems with this show, the latter being just one: it starts in 1943 so the setting is one in which your father or grandfather grew up, and it's not at all colorful; in fact, they might as well filmed this in black-and-white because the muted grays and browns are just as bad. Next, the story starts after the project has begun, so there's no exposition of the Manhattan Project at all; in fact, the characters aren't even really named. That means this show is going to lean heavily on flashbacks which just adds to confusion, especially at the outset. It's also leaning heavily on family relationships which is more distracting and FF bait. I was hoping the show would focus more on the science, the policy and ethical debates but instead we're getting splashes of Army Wives and Mad Men's misogyny. Deleted and removed from DVR's timer.… Expand

6 of 15 users found this helpful69

YorkMan

Dec 3, 2015

Quite possibly the most disappointing (new) television series I've watched in the last 10 years.
The show revolves around the 'lives' of a group of scientists (plus their wives/girlfriends) in what is a completely fictional narrative, using the backdrop of Los Alamos and the drive of eachQuite possibly the most disappointing (new) television series I've watched in the last 10 years.
The show revolves around the 'lives' of a group of scientists (plus their wives/girlfriends) in what is a completely fictional narrative, using the backdrop of Los Alamos and the drive of each 'group' to exist in a world hidden from the rest of the country.
There are some good points, the acting is top drawer, as is the score and photography... But the producers have fallen into the 'modern' trap of trying to offer up 21st Century values on a show set in 1943. I understand that rampant sexism, constant smoking, blatant racist slurs, and the fact that most people at Los Alamos seemed to spend pretty much all their off time having sex... Don't make for what is, ostensibly, a TV show which follows modern guidelines on acceptability.
No one swears, there's not a 'lived in' sense to any of it...
But, it's also incredibly dull.
The Manhattan Project was one of America's greatest achievements of the Twentieth Century, having that as the driving foreground to a weekly television show would have been fantastic.
But... As the series progresses, the narrative switches from the scientific/moralistic dilemmas of the 'men', to the banal, incessant sniping of the 'women'. OK, the last episode of the first series does (because it has to) switch back to the more 'important' plot elements of the creation of the atom bomb...
Yet, I suspect I won't be looking to tune into the second series, which is currently airing as I write this review.
Definitely a show to avoid!… Expand

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

xenowars

Apr 23, 2016

I began watching this series with the hope that it would be technically and/or scientifically interesting to see how the world's first atomic bomb was developed. Instead I watched with each passing episode how it was slowly devolving into what is basically an over-the-top Spanish soap operaI began watching this series with the hope that it would be technically and/or scientifically interesting to see how the world's first atomic bomb was developed. Instead I watched with each passing episode how it was slowly devolving into what is basically an over-the-top Spanish soap opera with very little science involved. And now, by the thirteenth episode, it's pretty much jumped the shark.

Where to begin? Hard to say, there are so many places this farce just got everything wrong.

The biggest part they got wrong was the faux hostility that the gun vs. implosion teams have for one another. Yes, there was competition, but like Feynman says "nature cannot be fooled". So, they admitted to themselves that rather than put all their energies into one idea that in the end might have an insurmountable problem attached to it (which the gun method did), they should explore other ideas just in case the other idea doesn't work out. They certainly weren't going to lie or steal resources from the other to do that. Nor were they going threaten to kill members of the opposing team. No, they openly agreed to try multiple approaches. Oppenheimer wasn't hell-bent on the gun method working, he was open to whatever might work because nobody really knew back then what would actually work and what wouldn't without exploring those ideas first. Roosevelt and Truman didn't give a damn which method was being used so long as it worked.

Which brings me to the portrayal of Oppenheimer. Who in the world decided to play him as a brooding, anti-social, stuck up, unpersonable, autistic-type person? He didn't single-handedly build the bomb through his gargantuan intellect, he brought together the greatest minds of the time to do it for him. He was bright but was also good at bringing hugely talented people together. In order to bring people like that together you have to be a person that gets along fairly well with other scientists. The Oppenheimer in this film, however, treats his fellow scientists like they're common peasants, like they should feel lucky to even be able to talk to him. What a bunch of nonsense. You don't achieve the levels of professionalism that he did in his field by being that way. You're not going to get good ideas out of people by ridiculing them.

The writers treated the idea of compartmentalization as though violating it amounted to a death sentence for those who violated it, when in reality nobody really gave a flip because you can't get science done that way and they knew it. It was impossible to develop the bomb in the time they had if scientists were not freely allowed to discuss their work with other scientists. Oppenheimer got that dead right and even explained to Groves why it wouldn't work. It's why they brought them all to Los Alamos and put them all within the same fence in the first place, so they could at least control them a little bit that way. This movie got it dead wrong. The scientists rebelled at being compartmentalized and the brass knew they'd be up a creek if they started trying to silence them because all the scientists were in agreement.

By now the series has grown men with PhDs in physics, men at the tops of their field basically lying to one another at every opportunity with the intention that if they keep lying, their ideas will eventually work. People like that don't get invited en masse to projects like this. People like that put out press releases for cold fusion and get called out on it when other scientists notice it has holes in it. If there was a problem with the gun method, there wouldn't be just one or two people that knew it wouldn't work. EVERYONE would have known because they were all freely talking to one another about it. The people who built the bomb didn't covet the idea to the extent that it would destroy their careers to follow it any further and certainly didn't kill themselves over being chosen to investigate a method that turned out to not work.

And, of course, since this is an American film, there are various subplots of this person sleeping with that person which is what you get when you know you have nothing else to say. There is so much fluff in this film that seems designed simply to fill space because nothing interesting is actually going on. The subplots of infidelity, of conspiracy, of treason, of homosexuality, ad nauseam.

Go watch Oppenheimer (1980). I couldn't find anywhere I could stream it online so I just bought the DVDs from Amazon. Much more interesting series without all the soap opera drama that plagues Manhattan. Oppenheimer goes into exquisite details explaining things at some points and the geek in me just loves it.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

SEE ALL 25 REVIEWS

Seasons & Episodes

79

Series Overview
Season 2

80
- Season 2 Overview
  Air Date: October 13, 2015
Season 1

78
- Season 1 Overview
  Air Date: July 27, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E13. Perestroika
  Air Date: October 19, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E12. The Gun Model
  Air Date: October 12, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E11. Tangier
  Air Date: October 5, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E10. The Understudy
  Air Date: September 28, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E9. Spooky Action at a Distance
  Air Date: September 21, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E8. The Second Coming
  Air Date: September 14, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E7. The New World
  Air Date: September 7, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E6. Acceptable Limits: Part One
  Air Date: August 31, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E5. A New Approach to Quantum Cosmology
  Air Date: August 24, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E4. Last Reasoning of Kings
  Air Date: August 17, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E3. The Hive
  Air Date: August 10, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E2. The Prisoner's Dilemma
  Air Date: August 3, 2014
- tbd
  S1:E1. You Always Hurt the One You Love
  Air Date: July 27, 2014