Matthew Rozsa

At the moment, one of the smartest, funniest and sweetest shows on television. ... Barring some unforeseen and drastic drop in quality, "Everything's Gonna Be Okay" is poised to offer some exceptionally strong storytelling in 2021. I can say at the very least that it is off to a roaring start.

The cast here is top notch, particularly Nicholas Rowe as George Washington and Nia Roberts as his wife, Martha Custis Washington. The commentary provided by political luminaries like Clinton and Powell and journalist John Avlon is welcome and insightful, and the film wisely relies on historians who are at the top of their game, including Joseph J. Ellis, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jon Meacham and Alan Taylor. ... My main criticism is that there are some important details about the man that are left out — his foreign policy views are given short shrift, and important figures like Oney Judge, his runaway slave who he tried to recapture, are overlooked entirely — but for the most part, it is successful.

Much of the show's success or failure will rest on how it handles the character arcs that it has built up so far — many series achieve sublime lift-off before crashing and burning during their journey, and "Everything's Gonna Be Okay" could easily suffer that fate. But what has premiered so far is pretty damn exquisite. If the series can maintain this momentum, it could become the next big thing in American pop culture, and deservedly so.