Critic Reviews

This is period-piece television served with a wink. Just enjoy the notion--sometimes lost amid all of TV’s male murderers--that women too can be wicked.

The series has a good deal of fun with what such notoriety might have been like in the late-19th century, with children jumping rope to Lizzie’s name, and all the locals casting sideways glances at her in church.

The Lizzie Borden Chronicles doesn’t quite know what to do with its own self-awareness, but the same can’t be said of its producer-star, who has a winningly evil twinkle in her eye whenever she encounters another problem she can kill her way through.

[Ricci's] performance in the first two episodes of Lizzie Borden Chronicles is more a collection of telling looks than substantive scenes. In the early going at least, Hauser makes a stronger impression as the doggedly pursuing Siringo, who otherwise has a soft spot for the abused wife of a prosperous hotel owner.

The premiere is shamelessly vulgar, but it never embraces its schlocky premise. [3 Apr 2015, p.59]

Lizzie Borden Chronicles is basically a cheesey soap with tinges of dark comedy. It's junk but kind of fun junk, if pulpy, bloody melodrama set to anachronistic rock soundtrack is your idea of fun.

Sumptuous costuming and a believable period setting aren’t enough to make up for weak storylines that intend to make more of killer Lizzie than she actually was.

An eight-episode miniseries sequel that, based on the two installments sent out for review, is content to be unexceptional trash.... What good there is in The Lizzie Borden Chronicles comes exclusively from Ricci and DuVall, who have a delectable rapport not too far removed from Bette Davis and Joan Crawford at their hag-horror peak in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?