Critic Reviews

The show is so gripping and often so dazzling in its visual command...Wonderland asks viewers to be discomfited week after week and trust that the effort will be rewarded. Even the toughest series tend to get soft over time, but for now the uncompromising Wonderland is worth every demand it makes.

Television has rarely been so bold as to present a series like Wonderland, which is intelligently written and acted with conviction and passion. [30 March 2000, p.2E]

Unsettling is understating it. ABC's Wonderland, which happens to be wonderful, could be one of the toughest sells in TV history. Buy into it, though, and you'll experience a truly remarkable look at the ins, outs and intricacies of mental illness and the doctors who treat it. [30 March 2000]

The characters are well-drawn by executive producer Peter Berg and his minions, who spent months doing research. The plots are provocative. The acting glistens. [30 March 2000]

Wonderland is more than a finely crafted TV medical drama. It's an exercise in intensity, as riveting as it is exhausting - and risky. [29 March 2000]

The prize in this case is complete intellectual engagement. [30 March 2000]

It’s not an easy show to watch (camera work aside, but I’ll get to that later). There aren’t a lot of laughs, and it’s riveting as hell...The acting is so good it knocks out most other shows you’ll see.

Ultimately, Wonderland disturbs not because it is violent or loud--though it can border on pathos--but because, unlike crime or injury, its subject defies easy blame and explanation. But creator Peter Berg (Very Bad Things) balances its starkness with writing of remarkable empathy. As Banger says at his custody hearing, "I have a tremendous respect for [my children's] minds, for the beauty of their minds." Wonderland has a tremendous respect for its audience's minds, and for the beauty of even a shattered psyche.

Wonderland is bold, bravura television, there's not much question about that. But it is also very grim going, and not everybody wants to be walloped and pummeled by an evening's entertainment. Some viewers are bound to have the same reaction as a typical Rivervue patient: "Let me out of here!" The others, the ones who stick around, will find much to admire.

A smart, thought-provoking drama. But for some it will be tough to sit through the show's unrelenting gloom....TV viewers who like to be challenged -- I'm thinking of the "Homicide: Life on the Street" fans out there -- will cotton to the murkiness of Wonderland.