Fox’s anthology series Scream Queens—from Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan—premieres Tuesday at 8 p.m. The comedy-horror series stars Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lea Michele, Abigail Breslin and Keke Palmer and is set in an elite sorority house targeted by a devil-clad killer. The following are reviews from TV critics around the web, compiled by B&C.
"Yet despite all its flaws, vulgarities and miscues, and for all the justifiable fear that, like many shows from this team, it will go screaming off the quality cliff, there is an energy to Scream most other new shows are missing. It's different. And it has Curtis."
—Robert Bianco, USA Today
“Scream Queens bogs down, though, when it enters another familiar Brennan-Falchuk-Murphy territory, which could be called identity entertainment — their penchant for making any story, regardless of its subject matter or genre, deal largely in representations of (and gags about) gender, sexuality, race, class and whatever other categories they deem worthy of breaking down."
—Mike Hale, New York Times
"Murphy excels at creating marketable television concepts, and Queens is perhaps his surest shot yet. It’s perfectly calibrated for Twitter consumption, between the oh-no-they-didn’t punchlines, act-break shockers, and hashtag-friendly title. But like so much of the fuel dumped into the social media furnace, Queens is instantly forgettable."
—Joshua Alston, A.V. Club
"Two things bear repeating: Curtis is glorious, and one hopes the show will quickly rise to meet her. More important, Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan know what they're doing."
—Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times
"For anyone who watched Glee wondering what it would be like to see the Cheerios get skewered, this is probably for you. Others, like these characters, should tread cautiously."
—Brian Lowry, Variety
