SummaryAn assault accusation against one of the players of a small town's junior ice-hockey team on its way to a national title nearly destroys the community in the Swedish-language drama based on Fredrik Backman's novel of the same name. [Premiered originally in several European countries on HBO España, Nordic, Portugal and HBO GO (Central Europe) o... Read More
Beartown
Season 1 Premiere:
Oct 11, 2020
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
82
User score
Generally Favorable
6.1
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Metascore
Universal Acclaim
100% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Feb 22, 2021
95
So, yes, Beartown works as an athletic drama, too. This ingredient and all others cohere seamlessly, and you’re left with a show that transcends noir even as it elevates it.
Feb 23, 2021
80
Icy and enraged, it’s a sobering portrait of tragedy wrought from not only toxic masculinity, but from the equally noxious—and potentially more deadly—systems that nurture, amplify, and protect it.
Feb 22, 2021
80
The series' creators stripped "Beartown" of the melodrama that's often inherent to stories centered on teenagers, and of the salaciousness that lesser series lean on when writing about sex crimes. In its place, they revealed a narrative that's chilling in its survey of how we can lose what makes of human in the pursuit of a win.
Feb 22, 2021
80
Even though Beartown takes its first episode to set things up, it does a lot of showing instead of giving a lot of exposition. That’s a good sign that the series will make for a well-paced drama.
Feb 19, 2021
80
[Answers] emerge with a satisfying subtlety in “Beartown”—for all its familiarity, a riveting tale.
Feb 22, 2021
75
“Beartown” is a blunt story, stocked with direct lessons. Still, it’s patient about revealing its thesis, and the life-or-death stakes set up from the get-go help to prepare the audience for when normal life in a small Swedish town turns very, very ugly.
Feb 22, 2021
70
While turning Backman’s complex novel into a series rather than a film was a smart move, Beartown does run into some issues along the way. The rise of Beartown’s hockey team is important for the context of the story, but the series spends too little time showing how their skill improved. The series relies too heavily on surface-level montages to communicate how this dramatic shift actually happened.
User score
Generally Favorable
55% Positive
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
23% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
23% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
Apr 5, 2021
6
Beartown is a miniseries that cannot escape comparisons due to its familiar style, but at least it manages to execute well what is related to **** culture, and how, - in situations like the one that gets developed here - the perpetrators are usually protected, and in this case for something as trivial as hockey. The path aims to build one tragedy on top of another, but the details are coherent and effective enough to provoke the much needed debate. I wasn't really ecstatic about it, but at least it got me interested in the book.
