“The Outer Range” may be a damaged family drama with the catchy hook of inexplicable, uncanny genre, but its most profound and moving qualities may be its ideas of faith and meaning and what happens when the unexplainable shatters what’s left of your beliefs.

"Outer Range" certainly corrals one's attention, wrangling a herd of plotlines into just the first of eight episodes. ... The creator of "Outer Range," newcomer Brian Watkins, is clearly striving for a gothic-in-the-great-outdoors atmosphere and is successful at it, even without the portal.

The show is mostly about how the hole’s very presence affects the Abbotts and the Tillersons, and the way their animus ripples down through generations. Its ambitions are subtle but powerful, and I can’t wait to see how deep the rabbit hole goes in future seasons.

Flashes of dark humor and just plain surrealness keep the show from stalling, but it's a slow burn with many burning questions. Throughout the crowding subplots, it's hard not to think: Can we just get back to that giant hole in the ground, please?

Outer Range has one of the worst momentum problems I've ever seen in a streaming show, squandering an evocative setting and some fun twists on portentous take-forever storytelling that prioritizes hints over character depth.

Outer Range is a lumbering, self-serious hodgepodge of sci-fi and modern Western. Brolin and Poots have, to their credit, bought into the premise of a magical realist love letter to the passing into history of a certain idea of American self-sufficiency. Audiences, though, may find Outer Range more drab than fab – epic only in its drawn-out running time and crying out for a close encounter with a cattle prod.

I do wish it had just decided to rip off “Yellowstone.” Brolin’s good and if the series eschewed the sci-fi conceit there’s enough good actors here to at least make it entertaining. But slathering a sci-fi element on top of it and not understanding what tone to strike doesn’t lead to oil, it leads to crap.

Comparing it to Yellowstone is dumb. This far superior show simply uses the cowboy life as a poignant reminder of our "negative" freedom (freedom of external forces) to emphasize our "positive" freedom (free will). Of course, it's also copying Lost's original concept of "realistic irrationality" (or is it the other way around?) but it improves on the delightiful feeling of dread and despair it suffuses thanks to a much more focused approach on a few characters and a few so-called existential questions of freedom, nihilism and religion. The photography and cinematography is superb. Acting and editing, excellent as well. But that is not enough for our....American **** critics who gave a low score as their primary school scorecards of so-called minorities returned all but one measly lesbian "native" American sheriff. Surely the showrunners will want to kowtow to the Red Guard by adding one transgender handicapped black teen in the next season.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Interesting parts but the show feels like it doesn't know where it's leading to. The big twist at the end of the season was obvious within a few episodes. The show thinks it's much smarter than it is. Mix between Dark, Yellowstone, and Lost. But all of those shows are much better.

It's a decent show but does seem to lack focus. I'm excited to see a season 2 that can improve upon the first.

It started out fairly interesting, but turned into an asinine rendition of Twin Peaks by the 6th Episode. Amazingly, there isn't a single likeable character on the show. If you are a fan of camp and looking for a good laugh - albeit unintentional - then the show might work for you.