Frances McDormand stars in HBO's Olive Kitteridge, an adaptation of a 2008 novel of the same name by Elizabeth Strout. Richard Jenkins and The Newsroom's John Gallagher Jr. join McDormand in the four-hour miniseries set in a small Maine town. The following are reviews from TV critics around the web, compiled by B&C.
“Still, for being such a defiantly quiet film, star-studded and yet the exact opposite of flashy, I think Olive Kitteridge is well worth your time on Sundayand Monday night.”
—Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“Shot with meticulous attention to detail by director Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right), the miniseries pares the sprawling source material down to something sparse and intimate, while maintaining the innate humanity of Strout’s words.”
—Libby Hill, AV Club
“McDormand's performance is one of those rare feats that tend to beggar efforts at finding exactly the right word of praise. Thus defeated, I'll settle for 'spectacular.'"
—Verne Gay, Newsday
“Nice is overrated. That's one takeaway from Olive Kitteridge, a quietly captivating miniseries about a seldom-quiet woman.”
—Robert Bianco, USA Today
“And as great as both McDormand and Jenkins are in the lead roles (both are early Emmy frontrunners), their story ultimately feels too repetitive — the miniseries plays as a collection of anecdotes designed to make the same point over and over and over again — to justify the running time..”
—Alan Sepinwall, HitFix
