Critic Reviews

A solid vehicle for the preternaturally charming Bacon, getting its goofy-gory job done with the same sort of efficiency and ramshackle energy that its hero brings to his Faustian gig.

"The Bondsman" is not for everyone. But it knows what it wants to be and has the confidence to see it through.

I had a few issues with the show during the first half of the season, but as we started to delve deeper into the characters and saw more of Hub's family, I felt like the final four episodes really helped sell the show's vision to me to the point that I would love to see more of them.

When the show finally starts to stretch out of its comfort zone and begins setting up a horror comedy, it finds its own distinct identity. It's just unfortunate The Bondsman doesn't get to that point sooner.

There is a smattering of Appalachian lore, a barely-bothered with throughline about condemned souls and redemption, some quite good jokes and an awful lot of Bacon killing things. Something for everyone, then – if quite a lot for no one too.

To the uneven extent that Amazon’s The Bondsman works, it’s thanks primarily to Kevin Bacon’s effortlessly winning lead turn as Hub Halloran.

There is nothing very new to see in The Bondsman. How much you enjoy it will depend on how much you enjoy Kevin Bacon (laconic, hard-bitten Kevin Bacon, not Tremors Kevin Bacon and not Footloose Kevin Bacon), how much you enjoy tales of demonic possession in a small town in southern America and how much you enjoy the sound of partly severed heads, blown-out tracheas and bloodied fingers.

“The Bondsman” struggles to figure out what it even is. The obvious comparison would be something like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but the show takes a long and winding road to nowhere instead. It’s a problem inherent to the ultra-short streaming seasons. The show’s genre and its episode order are at odds.

“The Bondsman” starts strong, but before long, Hub’s vintage truck has run out of gas.

“The Bondsman” lacks the kind of show-stopping character turns those shows gave folks (John Glover for the former, Tyler Labine and Ray Wise for the latter), opting instead for a sleepy, sloppy “Supernatural”-esque presentation that feels 20 years out of step.