With each episode, Sud and her writers demonstrate a sharpened skill for pace and revelation, along with gracefully subtle ruminations on corruption, racial profiling and--more profoundly--the very nature of morality. ... Mostly what you’ll feel at the end is exhausted, regarding the clock with some bewilderment: Did I really just lose myself in 10-plus hours of gripping television?
Seven Seconds does keep you in suspense with the expectation that bad things will happen, and they do. Nevertheless, the series is more hopeful than not. To find out just what that means you'll have to watch. I recommend you do.
Veena Sud ("the Killing") knows how to tell a suspenseful story and she once again focuses in on a crime story that is too compelling to miss. No perfect characters like the typical network TV sponge soup. Imperfections are brilliantly portrayed. The setting, Jersey City, is perfectly portrayed visually and through the show's characters. You know you are in NJ. The attention to detail by Sud is amazing. These actors are going to be in many more shows they are all so good.
If Seven Seconds is sometimes clumsy and slow to start, shifting from legal drama to The Wire and back again, it gears up into something more reflective and more surprising.
Seven Seconds, which runs for more than 10 hours that seem like 15, follows the grim and grimy Sud playbook without really saying much of anything new. The fault lies not with its stars, most of whom perform very ably or well beyond that. It’s just that sometimes enough is enough.
What emerges is a solid, overly dense, but occasionally surprising serialized Netflix drama, one that hinges on a police cover-up but which proves to be a bit messy in its incorporation of racial politics.
There’s a solid, more consistent and shorter version of Seven Seconds within the 10-episode version premiering this week. It’s up to you if you have the time to find it.
As it plods along, Seven Seconds is often redeemed by superb performances from actors who are constantly called on to make the best of overwritten and not always credible dialogue.
The show is comprised of excellent actors, committing to excellent performances. Unfortunately the plot is highly predictable and frustrating. The "twists" are expected and and forced, leaving little room for interest in the plot itself.
The show had the potential to be great, but the last two episodes were thoroughly predictable, frustrating, and boring. When you bring together an interesting plot with good actors, forcing predictable plot lines is tired. Luckily the show itself was saved by phenomenal acting
What a shame to see terrific performances undermined by a pedantic, force-fed narrative with huge plot holes and a ridiculous outcome. Ms. Sud, in her attempt to comment on social ills, has drawn out an obvious idea into a 10-hour soap opera. Tragic, because Regina King, as usual, pours heart and much soul into a role with no payoff. Watch it for the extraordinary performaces all around, then mourn for the waste as the series gets more and more outlandish and obvious as it progresses. This series was deservedly cancelled, as Ms. Sud wasted a great opportunity to deliver drama, and instead delivered a sermon and a shaggy dog story that dissapoints and disappears.
Drawwwwwwwn out as slooowwwwwly as possible to justify 10 episodes. Obviously trying to copy American Crime Story who was a far superior show where characters were far more complex. In this show, cliches galore abound in a lazily assembled story.
Moves along fairly predictable beats. If this is a tragedy, then it is a authorial/directorial tragedy as well - one of overwrought scenes, predictable dialogue, where even the red-herrings are transparent.
For those expecting a companion piece to crime shows like Fargo and The NIght Of, this will be a disappointment. For those watching a crime show for the first time ever, this may work as entertainment.