Critic Reviews

While you shouldn’t look for American Gothic to enter the Emmy conversation in the history of ever, that’s simply not the point of it. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a weird, sometimes eerie distraction that won’t require rewinding if a few lines of dialogue get downed out by the air conditioner, CBS’ newest offering might be a summer series that slays.

It is a chillingly enjoyable whodunnit for a lazy summer evening. The biggest danger is that the ratings are good and CBS tries to extend it past the 13 episodes scheduled for this summer. There's a reason Agatha Christie never tried to turn Murder on the Orient Express into a TV series.

This is a good summer mystery to take your mind off the heat.

As summertime smarmy yarns go, American Gothic holds promise.

Whodunit? After screening the first two episodes, I have no idea. But I'm engaged enough to keep watching to find out.

The two episodes made available for review are not without pulling power. But how much staying power will American Gothic have over a long haul of 13 episodes ordered for Season One?

Whether Gothic has enough energy to go the distance remains to be seen, but as it stands, the show isn’t urgent except for people who have a bottomless appetite for this kind of story, or those who have yet to taste it.

The TV equivalent of a murder-mystery novel, the kind you can read in between swims and nods on the beach. You know it’s going to be predictable, illogical, and a little trashy, and you don’t mind if the book jacket gets wet or torn, and if the book got stolen you’d forget about it almost instantly, but still, you kind of want to find out who done it.

Gothic is either afraid of being too gothic or just doesn't know what gothic is. [24 Jun 2016, p.53]

American Gothic eventually reveals itself to be a pedestrian murder mystery that slowly dies on the vine for want of interesting characters.