Critic Reviews

The Watcher is fun entertainment, excitingly embellished to stretch a terrific long read into a miniseries.

It’s the first really good drama series Murphy has made since leaving Fox for Netflix in 2018. And that’s thanks in large part to a serpentine plot that lays the groundwork for an exhilaratingly inconclusive finale.

More than anything, it is this cast that holds The Watcher together. ... I have no doubt that it is going to be huge, because that’s why Murphy is paid the big bucks, but there’s so little to it. I’d be staggered if anyone can remember a single thing about it come Christmas.

The cast does acquit themselves well. Naomi Watts has been asked to do more interesting work in the genre in the films “The Ring” and “Funny Games,” but is strong here, though underwritten. ... By the time we reach a coda demonstrating the trauma and dislocation both Dean and Nora feel, it’s almost hard to know how to take it: Their world is one of so little gravity that it’s hard to understand, based on the oddity and randomness we’ve seen up until the show’s ending, why these characters in an unrelatable, ultimately unremarkable fiction didn’t just bounce back.

“The Watcher” is made by people who don’t trust their audience. They might get you to watch, but they didn’t take the time to make something worth remembering.

If I rarely found myself intensely engaged, I never found myself bored, either.

“The Watcher” may be Ryan Murphy’s best Netflix series, but the Murphy-isms wear thin.

In another producers hands, The Watcher could have been a taut, tense thriller. But with Murphy and Brennan at the helm, it becomes more campy than tense, and even a stellar cast can’t save the show from itself.