Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

mrblue96 Good stuff...really good stuff! Love the premise, the characters, the acting, the whole thing! Intriguing...enlightening...disgusting! What more do you want?! Franco & Franco are awesome! Can't wait for the 2nd season!Having been born in 72, I can relate to the clothing, the cars, the music. Growing up, you occasionally come across stories/history regarding Times Square back then b/f Rudy took over...great period piece to say the least.

HalBaker_MA I guess I'm in the minority in that I think Franco is maybe the only good thing in this series. The rest is just bleh! And maybe, meh! While the show has the look of the era, the cast seems cartoonish at best. Not one visually appealing cast member. Impossible to watch any episode in one sitting. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Eddie_weinbauer It's a good decent drama show,but the problem is, Franco is clearly making this his ticket into be in big league.There is way too many scenes of him working behind the bar,or doing other stuff .A lot of them don't really go anywhere,they're just not needed fillers. Sometimes they have a lingering pan shot of someone sitting in a car smoking.There is a lot of these artistic shots ,that don't really go anywhereI like the show and it's atmosphere.The whole 70s look of it, really set the mood & make you feel like it's real.Though I'm sure the real thing was much more gritty and dark. So it probably don't hold up real well,to what real life was back then.But it's still a good show. The girls who play hookers does a really good job.They got the dead- inside-going-through-the-motion-look,in their eye.Whenever they are with a customer or their pimp.Maggie Gyllenhall,is doing a fantastic job in this show(And I don't even like her as an actress) Some of the younger talent are mostly there for eye candy and extras.Which is sad,cause they could bring more to the story. Kim Director is a great versatile actress.Same goes for Emily Meade,they both do a great job,but get way to little screen time.Compared to some of the others who are uninteresting and disappear from the show. But It seem like the focus will be Maggie and Francos characters. You get some background on the two but, it's mostly uninteresting, in terms of driving the story forward. I guess in Maggie's case, it's just to make her more sympathetic to the viewers.The 3 main focuses of the series is:Franco's life and the stuff that revolves around him, and his bar with the mob contacts. Maggie and her life, going from street walker to being in porn movies. Than there are these two cops,that you really don't know where will fit in yet. The rest are mostly extras.And sideshow characters. But it's still great show

Paul Creeden I lived in Spanish Harlem in the period of this series. As a new college grad, recently a dental school drop out, I ventured to Oz. I walked the length and breadth of Manhattan in my wing-tip shoes. I couldn't find work. I was laughed out of clothing stores where I applied for sales jobs by gay clerks who correctly judged me as a provincial. Yes, it was a tough town.I partook of 42nd Street entertainments occasionally. Times Square and 42nd Street were shabby and inhabited by street people of every sort. The vibe was similar to what we can experience today in large cities of Africa, South America and South East Asia. Why? Because Manhattan then was a place where run-down housing was cheap. Hordes of disenfranchised young people fled there from every corner of America. The false promise of success drew them. Yet the aristocracy still ruled and exploited them. This series has captured the mood of 42nd Street and Times Square of that time. It has even brought back to me some of the smells of that district. It was pungent with cigarette smoke, burned grease from shabby diners, cheap perfume, and disinfectant. Cars spewed unfiltered pollution. Cabs honked incessantly. Loud voices pierced the din. Wary tourists gawked and skittered.I appreciate the show's avoidance of retrospective political correctness. Hookers, pimps and corrupt cops were not gentile. Perhaps the show softens them all a bit, but the basic content is accurate. As a young gay man of a politically aware nature, I lived the experience of being hunted by crooked cops and exploited by mob venues. I winced when James Franco first appeared as identical twins in the pilot. I doubted the show's ability to pull this off, but it has remarkably well. Maggie Gyllenhaal does an exemplary job as an aging prostitute, independent of the pimp patriarchy. Her character exposes the underside of pre-feminist independence for women of the 1950's and 1960's. While Katherine Hepburn was playing upper class women of stature, the reality on the ground was quite different, especially for working-class women and women of color.This is the kind of programming which might save channels like HBO in an age of increased streaming competition. I place it on a tier with Showtime's "Ray Donovan". Gritty drama with suspense and good character development (writing) seldom fail.