Critic Reviews

The scripts for the four episodes made available to critics are as richly nuanced as anything you’ll see on TV or, to be sure, in a movie theater. You will not only know these characters after only one episode, you’ll be hooked on them, as well. In so many areas, Atlanta sets the bar exceptionally high.

Though the show contains laugh-out-loud moments, it occasionally proves to be more melancholy than mirthful. Along the way, it has some sharp things to say about race, gender, the absurdity of celebrity and the nagging fear of failure. Glover's Atlanta, it turns out, has all the right beats.

The TV breakout Glover fans have been waiting for, also unlike anything else on TV.

Atlanta and Better Things take C.K.’s refinements to a new level, merge them with worldviews that you rarely see represented on TV, and tell their stories with such economy and grace that you might feel as if a new language were being worked out before your eyes.

Driven by Glover’s charm and throwaway wit, Atlanta both compels and mystifies.

It’s much more real, honest and thought provoking than any program I’ve seen this year. Unique in every respect, Atlanta is a hands down one of this fall’s best new series.

Dry and offbeat, with an immediate, original voice, this comedy is a back-roads drive through the expansive territory between rags and riches.

It sounds like something out of NBC’s Must-See TV but Glover and his talented team of writers not only make it feel real, they make it feel essential.

Atlanta is one of the year’s best, and it is like nothing else on television, maybe ever. Imagine a series with the ambition and charge of The Wire, the reflective gallows comedy of Louie, and Glover’s unique brand of subtle brilliance--and then you’ll be getting close to having some sense of where Atlanta seems to be heading. It’s a series you can’t afford to miss.

The episodes surf hypnotically along, succeeding less on thematic concerns and more on Atlanta’s unerring knack for portraiture. The show introduces us to its world and its inhabitants without declaring its intent in every other scene.