Ironside: Season 1 (2013)
Average Rating: 4.3/10
Reviews Counted: 24
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 20
Ironside is an unnecessary, lackluster remake that could be a decent police procedural if it wasn't so mundane and monotonous.
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 12
Ironside is an unnecessary, lackluster remake that could be a decent police procedural if it wasn't so mundane and monotonous.
Season Info
A paraplegic police detective solves criminal cases in New York City.
Network: NBC
Premiere Date: Oct 2, 2013
Cast
-
Blair Underwood
Robert Ironside -
Brent Sexton
Gary Stanton -
-
Kenneth Choi
Ed Rollins -
Neal Bledsoe
Teddy -
Spencer Grammer
Holly
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Episodes
Pilot
The team is introduced in the opener of this series, in which a paraplegic police detective solves criminal cases in New York City.
Pentimento
Ironside deals with a mistake from his past when a suspected murderer is released from prison.
Action
A high-end poker game is robbed. Meanwhile, Teddy goes on an undercover assignment.
Critic Reviews for Ironside: Season 1
The plotting of the premiere oscillates between sensational and sanctimonious, splattered, whenever creativity runs thin, with the raw entrails of Ironside's maudlin backstory.
The ageless Underwood remains one of TV's most charismatic actors, and is long overdue for a hit.
As independent as this new Ironside is, thanks to the plodding writing here, he is being defined by his disability, the exact opposite of what someone in his condition would want.
All this Ironside does is talk tough and spout exposition endlessly. Yak, yak, yak.
There's an interesting psychological drama to explore here, if Ironside's writers and its seasoned cast can resist the easy, repetitive lure of cop-show pro-forma.
I can neither recommend it nor recommend you leave it alone.
To be fair, Ironside could very well succeed: Stranger things have happened, particularly in weak time slots. Whether it can become less dreadful in the process is an open question, but nothing in Wednesday's opener would cause one to answer "yes."
Underwood tries hard throughout and is still a small-screen presence. But that doesn't save Ironside from being thoroughly overcooked and stuffed with convoluted deductions on how the featured wrongdoing went down.
It's the most cliched, least believable, least fun, and just awful new drama of the year. It is aggressively bad. Avoid at all costs.
There's a disability at work here, all right, but it has nothing to do with the show's wheelchair-bound hero.
IIronside's manifest failings go well beyond the political incorrectness of its producers. It is a dank and ugly affair, with Underwood playing a dour, Nietzschean superhero.
This Ironside starts out as a good cop show that Underwood could turn into a very good one.
If Ironside is going for more than cop-show-with-a-gimmick, it needs to go even bigger.
A competent, connect-the-dots procedural that never offers much of a case for why a remake was needed.
Moments... are so bad they are almost laughable.
A lot of the show plays like a parody of hard-boiled cop show cliches.
Ironside has all the right ingredients for viewers looking to have their expectations met before - or while - they doze off. The rest of us will be occasionally distracted but mostly bored.
This Ironside is a cliche-ridden cop show that's violent and unpleasant.
What do beehives, freshly painted fingernails and Raymond Burr's old cop drama have in common? They're all things better left alone.
Gruff at every turn, including when he's coaching hockey, and always working, even in the middle of an amorous interlude, Ironside overdoes the dedicated cop role, overcompensating for the wheelchair with his relentless pursuit of criminals.
I'm not quite sure why anyone felt the need to revive Ironside. While the original did run for nine successful seasons... it otherwise didn't have the same pop-culture, baby-boomer impact of other revived shows (Charlie's Angels and Knight Rider)
Blair Underwood's oppressive, angrier portrayal of Robert Ironside... isn't quite the worst thing about this lackluster reimagining (that would be the clichéd cop-procedural plot structuring), but it's the most obvious one.
It's a show that will take viewers down a dark and hopefully enlightening path with Ironside and his team, and it looks like that path will be a good one.
Ironside is back for no discernible reason.
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