Critic Reviews

For Fitzgerald fans, wannabe Fitzgerald fans, or even people who can appreciate a well-done period drama, Z has a lot to offer, even as it gives us lots to think about.

Ricci, always playing a person rather than a personality, is the reason to watch. It’s a subtle evocation of a famously electrifying character, free from grand gestures, centered behind her eyes.

Even though we know this is one love story that doesn’t end well, The Beginning of Everything delivers an entertaining seduction into a fabulous, bygone world.

Ricci serves as an executive producer and delivers the best work of her career. ... Z is helped by an unusual format--the drama unfolds in 10 half-hour episodes, making it especially binge-worthy. More providers should try half-hour dramas. They don’t feel like endurance challenges, as many one-hour shows do.

The show finds a nice groove about halfway through, after husband and wife settle in Roaring '20s Manhattan and proceed to tear the town apart.

Z: The Beginning of Everything tries to capture the many facets of this complex and conflicted woman, and does so with some success. There are moments when it’s exhilarating to be immersed in the 1920s with Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald (David Hoflin) and his wife/muse (a fierce, focused Christina Ricci).

The story itself is interesting, if well-known, but the series is overacted, over-accented, and overwritten. [27 Jan 2017, p.55]

While beautiful to look at--some of this was filmed in Wading River, near Herod Point--Zelda can also feel like that TV biopic we’ve all seen before: The one that trudges dutifully along without adding much depth or subtlety in the process.

Zelda was a complicated woman, and Ricci definitely has the chops to play that. But the show never really lets her breathe into that realness, resulting in something resembling suffocation. The end result is that we now know what it’s like to party with Zelda and Scott. But we don’t really know who they were.

Ultimately Z: The Beginning of Everything is low-fi, escapist television that houses a serviceable biography with a fair amount of style, even though] its TV series format feels a little like a missed opportunity to tell the story in a different way.