‘Gypsy’ Review Roundup: Naomi Watts Can’t Redeem This Beautifully-Made Boring TV Show

New Netflix drama Gypsy is drawing negatives from critics for being too serious and too boring. The pacing appears to be quite slow, and leaves viewers hoping for more. Naomi Watts stars as a successful New York City therapist who, while becoming too wrapped up in her patients’ lives, is also becoming more distant from her own. Her daughter is having issues in school, her marriage is on the rocks, and she finds herself strangely intrigued by the female barista at her usual coffeeshop.

According to critic consensus, not even veteran Watts can hold enough interest in the slow-moving show.

GYPSY REVIEW ROUNDUP

“There is a lot of teasing in Netflix’s June 30-launching Gypsy, but ultimately the Naomi Watts-starring series is a non-thrilling exercise in temptation and betrayal that goes nowhere and doesn’t get there particularly fast… The 10-episode first season stumbles most noticeably in its near total waste of the Oscar-nominated Watts’ skills and talent… A deft actor who can shift gears from vulnerability to hard metal and every emotion in between with finesse in the swiftest and smallest of movements, Watts also does double duty on the Universal Television-produced series as an executive producer, along with Lisa Rubin, Liza Chasin and Rudd Simmons.”
–Dominic Patten, deadline.com

“Gypsy’s press materials describe it as a “psychological thriller,” a term that connotes an urgency and focus the drama notably lacks… Watts does a good job of conveying Jean’s simmering frustration and her yearning taste for danger, but the clarity of her performance is not enough to inject the series with sustainable energy. “Gypsy” is clearly meant to be the tale of a smart adult who likes playing with fire, but it is too somnolent and superficial to ever make her dilemmas ever come alive. Like Jean herself, the viewer is likely to be left wanting more.”
–Maureen Ryan, Variety

“Mediocre and even awful TV is often technically very good. This leaves you staring at a series like “Gypsy,” the 10-episode psychosexual thriller that arrives on Netflix Friday, like a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture puzzle. Something’s missing, but the flaw doesn’t leap out at you. The series is elegant, sensitively acted and directed — and an utter snooze. Boredom is the subject of Gypsy as well as its substance… The episodes are a slide show of sleek interiors and tastefully shadowed bars, the pacing logy without being suspenseful. Binge-watching it is like binge-drinking cough syrup. Yet there’s so much talent here, waiting for a spark. Stevie Nicks even records a new version of her song for the title sequence. The arrangement is pretty but placid, without the urgent emotion of the original — even though the song is the same, the production is polished and Ms. Nicks’s voice still lovely. That’s Gypsy, the show, in a nutshell. There’s nothing wrong with it except everything.”
–James Poniewozik, The New York Times

“The pedigree might lure you in but good grief, the execution is awful… The only positive is that a female character is following a path usually trodden by middle-aged men. There is definitely something to be said about what happens to a woman when she hits 40 and still wants to be desired and keep a connection with her youthful, free-spirited side. But Jean is a whiny little woman with that haircut that everyone has now and a perfectly good, libidinous husband at home willing to put up with her haywire antics, sudden changes of perfume and half-arsed mood-swings. She is in no way sympathetic or enigmatic enough to take you with her.”
–Julie Raeside, The Guardian

“Gypsy creates mysteries that are meant to be exciting and alluring: Who is Jean? Why does she pretend to be someone else? Will her family and friends find out? The problem is that the show doesn’t make the people around her — or her relationships with them — interesting or vital enough to matter. The best moments come when the show eases up on the tension it tries so hard to create and lets the performances take over, as when Jean and Sidney dance at a nightclub, or Jean practices a lie in front of a mirror. If only the rest of the show were as thrilling.”
–Kelly Lawler, USA Today