Critic Reviews

Reynor’s lead performance is captivatingly cocky and sincere, Friend is a wacko hoot, and Lowery’s handling of these period-piece proceedings is so entrancing--full of ominous transitional fades and gorgeously illuminated nighttime landscapes and interior tableaus--that it’s easy to forgive the show its maiden, and minor, dramatic missteps. ... It’s not its predetermined destination that makes the show so compelling; it’s the insane path it’ll take to get there.

A handsomely produced period drama that, through three of the first season's 10 episodes, is more tantalizing than satisfying--though it's amply and very watchably tantalizing.

Strange Angel refuses to yield its secrets readily, or quickly, but instead methodically. Given the science (difficult) and the cult (abstruse) that's a reasonable approach to the story, just not a gripping one. And over the first three episodes, "Angel" often loses its grip.

The first three episodes of Strange Angel often feel a bit too much like a slow burn, waiting to get to the “good stuff.” Having said that, it’s a reasonably engaging slow burn.

Strange Angel could develop into an engrossing adventure of a man who couldn’t straddle the line between pushing the mind to its limits and pushing beyond its breaking point, but it’s too content early on to dwell on the mundane instead of truly embrace the strange.

It’s hard to understand why Strange Angel needs to give Jack’s frustrations and pontificating about The Future so much time when there’s a much more interesting story waiting to be told elsewhere. It might be more true to life, but as long as the show is trying to mine that life for drama, it might as well cut to the chase.

An ambitious but uneven show based on the colorful and controversial life of Jack Parsons.

The upside of such a leisurely arc is that it allows for conversations into which exposition is less obviously inserted, and scenes have time to wander before getting to a point. The downside is that, spread across so many hours, the action tends to run in circles over the same ground.

In its early going, Strange Angel just isn’t strange enough to warrant sustained viewer interest.