Critic Reviews

A marvelous six-part British comedy. .... Walker makes a magnificent wreck, though she is brilliant in every mood.

If the instigating incident feels overly contrived, the emotions it dredges up feel real enough to make up for it — and nowhere more so than in Walker’s fearless, ferocious performance.

While often not exactly laugh-out-loud funny, Clement’s comedy background (Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows) makes him a reliable source of dry one-liners, and the intergenerational conflict – like when Steve makes a cringeworthy debut to Izzy’s cool friends – will bring smiles of recognition.

Let’s just say Alice and Steve embark on petty tit-for-tat revenges that wreak havoc on both their lives and show us, very entertainingly, that the fogeys are far more immature than the youngsters.

As fuzzy as “Alice and Steve” can feel at its margins, it sees its central characters with all the focused clarity that comes with a certain level of loathing. Like an old friend who’s made a major faux pas, there’s enough tangible history for the audience to look past the flaws.

Alice And Steve gets funnier the more the tension between Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement’s characters ramps up. But the effective way their friendship is established is what makes the tension work.

“Alice and Steve,” snappily written, subversive, but deceptively sweet, is a worthy addition to the import roster.

Hulu’s “Alice & Steve” is wild, uneven, very funny, and surprisingly insightful, even if it’s the kind of show you think you might hate.

Alice and Steve isn’t always perfect on a script level, but its challenging premise and a wonderful Nicola Walker performance allow the unconventional “wrong-com” to find genuine emotional sentiment at its core.

Perhaps Alice And Steve (like a lot of recent comedies) would benefit from a longer run—more episodes to let the protagonists and the premise grow. But in the six episodes it does have, the series sharpens its strengths—well, mainly an exceptional Walker—for a mildly amusing time.