Critic Reviews

A biographical drama every bit as daring and razzle-dazzling as the best of Fosse. [1-14 Apr 2019, p.12]

Williams conveys Verdon’s star quality without letting it obscure her steely survivor’s core. In Mad Men terms, the character is Joan (an underestimated single mom), Betty (a betrayed wife rebuilding her life) and Peggy (a woman who’s just as talented and driven as any man in her field) in one.

Ultimately, this is a show about the making of entertainment, and the producers do a brilliant job highlighting the individual struggles the process entails, as well as how the people who devote their lives to it are affected.

From a storytelling standpoint, the back-and-forth choreography is not without stumbles. Performance-wise, though, FX’s eight-part Fosse/Verdon is never less than all that jazz.

There’s nothing Michelle Williams can do, no lines written for her to say, that can dim the luster of her performance in this series, which owes everything to her and to Sam Rockwell, and to the exhilarating, if all too brief, musical numbers.

Fosse/Verdon can never quite escape its deteriorating orbit, plunging closer and closer to the black hole that is its central subject, because it knows, deep down, how essential he is to American art. That could have tanked the whole project. And yet ... it doesn’t. Because, deep down, this is a fantastic show about a marriage.

Seeing them portrayed on the small screen by two major movie stars, Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell, feels like a stunt at first. But Williams especially makes her vulnerable, defiant Verdon come alive--a gladiator in a little black leotard. [5/12 Apr 2019, p.91]

An alluring and thoughtful eight-episode biographical drama.

Sam Rockwell is excellent as the passionate, manipulative, adulation-seeking Fosse. As Gwen Verdon, Michelle Williams is very nearly perfect. ... The bigger issue, and I’m not sure how much it could’ve been avoided, is that the “destructive artist and long-suffering helpmeet/muse” trope gets really freaking old.

In its whirling, time-fractured narrative, “Fosse/Verdon” is as ruthless and truth-seeking about its principals as the couple were about the shows and films they worked on together and separately.