VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Snowgoat It's been a couple of weeks since I finished Halt and Catch Fire, and I still can't stop thinking about it. I was introduced to this show by my wife in late 2017, having (like many) heard nothing about it. I was blown away almost immediately. Being a big fan of Mad Men, the similarities were conspicuous right away - and you can't help getting the feeling the creators originally pitched this to AMC as "Mad Men in the 80s - with computers!" While there's nothing wrong with that setup - luckily the show establishes its own identity fairly quickly. The character of Joe MacMillan, for example, may initially seem like little more than a Don Draper clone, but eventually he grows into something very different - and ultimately more satisfying. The IT setting may feel like a turn-off for many, but I am simply staggered at how well the writers managed to weave character, story and fun into the development of some fairly dry and esoteric IT projects that take place during the show. Even if you don't understand 100% of the tech-side of things (which feels brilliantly researched) - you won't care, because you'll get enough of the gist to join the dots and get carried along by the narrative momentum.But what really makes this show are, of course, the characters - who are all brilliantly written and performed. The cast are uniformly exemplary. Lee Pace, MacKenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Kerry Bishe, Toby Huss... I could go on. These are career-defining performances - thanks to some brilliant casting and the strength of the material they're given to work with. Given that the budget of this show was likely miniscule compared to other 'big TV' of the moment, it looks and sounds fantastic. The imaginative use of lighting and colour gives Halt and Catch Fire its own visual identity - and makes it far more interesting to look at than most 'drama' shows on TV. The use of music is also great - avoiding obvious 80s/90s musical touchstones for the most part - and I guarantee by the end of the show there'll be a few classic songs you won't be able to ever hear again without thinking of this show. The theme tune (theme 'pulse' may be a better description) is also brilliantly evocative. There are a few issues, of course - the biggest being that the show stutters badly midway through the third series - which began to feel like it was treading water and running out of ideas. Luckily it emerges from this rut triumphantly, and the fourth and final series was some of the best television I've ever seen. As you can probably tell by now, I can't recommend this show enough. I don't bother writing many reviews on here these days - but I felt duty bound to on this since it's one of those shows that I know will sit in my mind forever. So, if you've heard people talking about Halt and Catch Fire and are on here checking out user reviews to decide whether it's worth your time - I'm hoping this might nudge you into watching it. If it does, I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

mrbreadtoast-06562 This show is about the birth/growth of the personal computing and the internet. It revolves around the work of a handful of characters, mixed with their personal drama. Looking back I wish I hadn't watched this series at all. The characters keep striving to be on the cutting edge, but the viewer is never really given the satisfaction when they reach their goals. Their achievements are glossed over, and the viewer is left underwhelmed. The acting was good, but I kept waiting for something notable to happen, and it never really did. The series had the typical Hollywood social engineering (anti-male & anti-nuclear family agenda). While it wasn't so blatant in the beginning, once you got to the end, you realize there was an agenda all along.The best programmer, hardware engineer, and business people were women. All of the main male characters in the series were portrayed to be physically weak, mentally/emotionally weak, socially awkward, or failures. They even made the suave ladies' man character bisexual. There was no "average guy" character for male viewers to relate to.The finale made it clear the whole series was about promoting women in the tech industry. Most of the women shed connections to men, including a daughter coming out of the closet. Plus, the finale had a long pro-female speech given to a large group of women. While I have no problem with strong female characters, there comes a point when it's pushed too far and it emasculates the male characters – and the show loses complete credibility as a result.

cathydoggymom I have spent the past several months binge watching the four seasons of this series and enjoyed the way in which this program developed. I hated to see the last episode of the fourth season air and would have loved to have had more episodes yet to watch! Great job by all of the cast members. Everyone played well off one another.

escctrlshift This was, all things considered, an original and highly successful series, in spite of being somewhat formulaic. It captures a period of American history that touched many of us deeply. If you remember when Compuserve email addresses were a bunch of digits separate by a comma, or the first time you saw the magic spinning Mosaic icon at the upper right of your browser window, or the first time you saw the Netscape letter "N" humping the spinning globe there, if you remember navigating with a left-pointing arrow on Linux 1.xx or so, using FVWM window manager and so on, you were there and you will like this series.Or, you might just like it for the actresses or actors cast in the various roles. They are all attractive, interesting choices from a casting perspective -- and mostly infeasible, (at least as far as the core hackers are concerned) -- from a real-world, what-do-geeks-really-look-like perspective. If you want to see a room full of realistic-looking hacker-geeks on a major TV series, see Silicon Valley. But there too, the women are really just too good-looking, just as they are on Halt and Catch Fire. Any woman as pretty as Mackenzie Davis or Kerry Bishé is unlikely to tear herself away from the limelight or the mirror long enough to become a good coder. To be a great coder, you really have to not like the sight of your own face that much.In case I didn't make that point strongly enough, girl geeks just aren't pretty enough. However if you think you are, I'd like to hear from you.BUt seriously, this was a good series. It's an object lesson in how pointless, unsatisfying and expensive technology really is. It doesn't make life easier. It just makes life more...technological, and therefore more busy and annoying, which is why we watch retro-themed, nostalgic stuff like this, that tries to recapture the feeling of magic when the Internet was new magic, when web browsers and Java Script were as cool as a Tesla Model 3, etc. etc. Try to imagine a time when "sushi" was indescribably exotic and good, and the waitress had a real Japanese accent. Then watch this series for the same feeling, except, it's raw data you want to consume, immoderately, any way, anyhow.