The Leftovers

Utterly transcendental, deeply poetic, and ambitiously spiritual, 'The Leftovers' captures the existential dread and confusion of a post-9/11 world in a manner that is quite often emotionally overwhelming, but powerful in its humanist overtones amidst the melancholy. Richter's score is among the most haunting and outright heart-rending I've heard in my entire life. A show about coming to terms with loss, grief, and all the things that will never be explained. Remarkable, soaring television.

The affectingly apocalyptic first season concerns the relationship between familial disintegration and social disintegration. It then gradually shifts to an exploration of the way such disintegration opens a field ranging from consolatory delusion to necessary fiction. The final season, filmed in Australia, seems to have been done somewhat on the cheap, and contains some disastrously poor sequences (e.g., everything on the Bass Strait ferry), but more or less redeems itself by the conclusion.

Max Richter's score is a thing of glorious beauty, and Justin Theroux is as great and cool here as he was in 'Mulholland Dr.'. Eccleston and Coon are really good, too. It started off as a remarkably different and insistingly glum and gloomy series, but all the stuff with the cult in season 1 was pretty lame. Though the setup in season 2 was highly intriguing, it became too silly for its own good. The final season was superb, however. Bold, unpredictable and original.

Carrie Coon is one of the greatest actresses of our time. And without Max Richter's music, this show wouldn't exist.

On one hand, works really well from an emotional POV with numerous truly powerful scenes. The main actors/actresses are great and the 3-4 recurring tracks, moving. On the other hand, it suffers from heavy-handed writing: no care is given to the plot progression or to psychology. Characters often act in a dumb manner or in an unbelievable way (i.e. How could Theroux's screwed-up cop keep his job for so long?). Besides it's more about how humans deal with a cataclysmic event than with its origin.

Season 2 and 3 elevated the art form of television. I couldn't sleep after it.

An incredible study of grief and acceptance. Fuck it, it's one of the best written and acted tv shows of all time. HBO keeps knocking it out of the park.

Max Richter's cheesy soundtrack encapsulates this very well. I started watching this at the behest of someone who swore it was smart, and failed to mention that it was created by that garbage creator of Lost. I didn't make it past the first couple of episodes. It's as idiotic, plasticky and awful as I should have suspected it would be.

it is like Lost without Lost. well shot but i cannot see any substance to that. nothing catchy & intriguing. good for background noise and before sleep... do i miss something i wonder?

The music is really good. The rest is well executed nonsense.