Critic Reviews

"Beth" is complex and layered, and a departure for Schumer in the best way. ... There is so much more to "Beth," and to Beth. There is something refreshing about the series, and how it resists neat categorization.

Raw and impactful, the new season will keep viewers on their toes in more ways than one.

Filled with memorable and authentic supporting performances. ... “Life & Beth” is arguably the best vehicle yet to serve Schumer’s talents.

If Amy Schumer does harbor ambitions as a serious actor, though, Life & Beth features her most compelling and complex onscreen performance to date. She gets many of the show’s biggest laughs, but just as often she’s the straight man to the supporting cast’s various oddballs.

It’s frequently very funny, full of bright comic turns, and often quite moving, even beautiful, sometimes just for the space of a shot, in a way that might make you reconsider a character. It’s sentimental in the end, but that is what sometimes happens when artists grow happy in their life.

The ambitious “Life & Beth” has flaws, not just with its early tonal zig-zags but also with length. Like too many shows these days, it could easily have been two episodes shorter, and thus tighter. But it’s nonetheless an impressive and enjoyable series that’s about the perils of letting fear guide us, the need to heal, and the choice to enjoy life in the face of death.

It’s those little, often subtle gags, that keep the audience from sinking into Beth’s depression along with her. That effort to alleviate some of the heaviness helps us go along on the journey Beth is going to take without making her seem like she doesn’t appreciate what she has.

Life & Beth isn’t as funny as previous Schumer projects (nor is it trying to be), but I found the adolescent flashbacks particularly enriching to this narrative.

Life & Beth, though, struck enough of a chord that it’s back this week for another 10-episode season — and one that’s even better than the first.

Life & Beth is a lot more than a smartly scripted rom-com. ... Watching it unfold, you wish Schumer either decided to focus more on the budding romance with the weird and weirdly likable John—it’s a charmingly offbeat relationship—or cut the series down to, say, seven episodes, like HBO’s recent coming-back-home comedy Somebody Somewhere.