Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Myriam Nys (Review based on watching the whole of the first season.)Over-rich series that contains enough themes and issues to supply five or six series. The various storylines, considered individually, are interesting enough, but there's so much going on that the show collapses under its own weight. It's a pity, because the acting is good and some of the questions are intriguing and/or topical. Another problem : the series tries to treat so many themes at the same time, that it becomes a stew of inconsistencies and contradictions. For instance : there is a married couple consisting 1) of a mother who is a pious Muslim and 2) of an atheist father who has turned against his Muslim heritage, presumably because he witnessed a number of atrocities committed in the name of that religion. These two parents have an adolescent son, who likes to participate in Islamic prayers and ceremonies while dressing as a girl. Both parents are pretty cool with this behavior, which strikes me as unrealistic : it is much more likely, much more plausible, that the mother would fret about her son disobeying gender-related rules, while the father would fret about his son bringing rituals and prayers into the home."Here and now" shows courage in tackling some difficult problems, I'll give it that ; but the general confusion is such that the result is weirdly unbalanced and inept.I won't watch the following seasons, but I'm somewhat curious, from an intellectual viewpoint, about the characters next to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. Will season 2 or 3 contain a blind English aristocrat who suffers from diabetes, anorexia and AIDS and who falls in love, chastely, with a pro-choice Roman Catholic nun from Siberia ? Is the public about to meet a lesbian ballerina, born without hands or feet, who harbours strongly royalist convictions and who is persecuted by a Buddhist sect of Australian beaujolais tasters ? Will the world be destroyed by computer-generated djinns, save for an elite of vegan, ambidextrous, gender-fluid Scotsmen (or Scotspersons) ?Sadly these fine prospects will remain shrouded in mystery, at least for me.UPDATE 20th of May 2018 : I discover, belatedly, that HBO cancelled the show after one season. I apologise for not noticing this sooner !

yuting-76328 To be honest, I enjoyed it. It touches topics I'm interested, like reverse discrimination, religion, and others. It relates to me so well that I somehow completed the missing parts of the show in my mind.But just as others reviews pointed out, touching was the only thing it did. It didn't go far. It stopped in an award place, as if the show is telling the audience that "oh we don't know how to deal with this, so you think about it, like philosophically."The characters are great. The topics are intriguing. But the show has wasted those.

kellybailey-23521 It's unbelievable how so many characters and stories are in this show, and not one story line loses any dynamic or momentum for the sake of another. This show is written so exceptionally, the main and multiple story lines are a brilliantly cohesive unit that work together to move the show forward. That is so amazing -- think about that when you watch how multi-faceted this show is. Connecting all the chaos. Alan Ball, your mind is so beautiful!The entire cast is brilliant but two actors especially stood out for me -- Peter Macdissi as the psychiatrist, and Marwan Salama, who plays his son. Salama is a radiant presence onscreen, quite mesmerizing.

lindsayloo85 I initially wanted to watch this because it seemed new and fresh. Big disappointment. Holy crap is it one-sided politicaly and absolutely ridiculous. It's almost embarrassing how "inclusive" it is trying to be but actually non-inclusive. It is actually embarrassing. What a joke.