Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge is an extraordinary character study, featuring a brilliant performance by Frances McDormand.

[A] lovely, ruthless, masterfully restrained two-night, four-hour contemplation of love, marriage, parenthood, mental illness and identity.

There are many things that Olive Kitteridge gets right, but none so significant as how brilliantly it simultaneously captures the deep, pervasive stillness and the close, suffocating entanglement of small-town living.

All of which adds up to drama--which includes a fine turn by Bill Murray--of a notably high order.

[A] soaring, inventive miniseries.

McDormand is clearly and rightfully the star of the show, but Bill Murray and Richard Jenkins provide additional reasons to tune in; both bring a warmth and dry wit to a drama whose domestic scenes occasionally veer from awkward to (intentionally) taxing.

Somehow, it’s hard to appreciate the insights because the whole thing just feels so gosh-darned depressing.

I'm totally glad i took the chance to watch this mini-series. It's short, has an excellent cast, and you get unexpectedly attached to the characters. It's a really dramatic story in which you'll find yourself immersed. Definitely recommend

With all the mini-series's and sporadic seasons of tv shows, it can be easy to overlook a very simplistic and yet deep story with so much intellect about the world it can make you yourself look at life in a different perspective. Opening up onto a Olive Kitteridge a woman who has spent the better part of her life living in silent or not so silent judgement, we are taken onto a 30 year journey of her life through a telescope of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and relative everyday life. As she loses her husband and drifts emotionally and geographically away from her son, her life takes a 180, then ends on an almost unknown angle with us watching transfixed on her take of society. Such a descriptive and subtle glance into the quirks of life, this movie brings on the normal, abnormal, and downright absurd so pliantly it's almost like music.

I would say this is in the vein of the movie sideways, very good but not as good, funny, but not as funny. good dialogue, but not as good, but longer in a good way.

This is probably the most thoughtful show I've ever seen. I wasn't sure HBO could be engaging without the usual decapitation, **** and incest hooks, and this show has proven me wrong.

I have no idea what people see in this show,it is dark, slow and there are no likeable people. The acting is incredible, but that's not enough for me.