The series follows the life story of aspiring writer Emily Dickinson. Emily suffered a lot of embarrassment and fear of her parents and ignored the community. Dickinson has never stopped anything to rebel against her tough background and is trying to make her voice heard through poetry.
It will infuriate staunch Dickinsonites, which is precisely what the poet, who often displayed a delicious sense of irony, would have wanted. What liberty a loosened spirit brings.
Because Dickinson is more Euphoria meets Riverdale with a dark, comic edge, it takes the pressure off Steinfeld to become a legendary historical figure.
Apple's most satisfying and confident treat, without question, is creator Alena Smith's sly comedy "Dickinson" - a surprisingly splendid liberation riff on everyone's favorite 19th-century poet, Emily Dickinson.
Within Dickinson is the still-nascent potential for something beautiful, waiting to burst forth like a morning glory, so long as its promise is cultivated with care.
With fresh music, frolicking humor, bizarre flares, and a deep desire to reveal the heart of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson is a show that's easy to fall for.
The acting is terrible, and not in a let's-drink-wine-and-make-fun-of-it way. A primary problem is that the children speak in a 2019 manner and the adults speak with the more appropriate antebellum affect.
Em's imagination has her changing into this sultry red gown and riding away with Death, whose carriage is pulled by glow-in-the-dark invisible horse outlines and who is played by WIZ KHALIFA in Mad Hatter cosplay. I love ... everything about this?
It doesn't overdo the ironic modernity, instead sprinkling a handful of mild swear words and slang terms into each episode in a way that doesn't take the viewer out of the story. It's pretty artfully done.
The show liberates Emily from her present-and closes, with a slam, the gap between Emily's world and our own. Dickinson's passion is infectious; one is tempted to start signing emails with glorious, cryptic em-dashes.
Dickinson shows promise in a number of areas -- among them striking visual language, an irresistible playfulness in the music supervision, and a sense of fun, if not humor, that pervades even scenes about mortality or misogyny.
