User reviews

It's almost criminal that Reprisal was canceled after only one season. It had such potential to grow as a series. It's a revenge thriller about a woman who was left for dead by her brother and his gang. She puts together her own crew to help complete her revenge. This is an incredibly fun and well acted thriller about revenge. It will hook you from the start and keep you entertained throughout the series! For a revenge show it's smart and surprising. I didn't really know what to expect but I'm so glad I gave it a chance because I was pleasantly surprised. If you're looking for a fun show to binge then give this a try.

This series was beautifully dark intriguing and unusual with great story telling.

There could have been a spin off series just about the Monster Crew. Craig Tate and Wavvy Jonez play their characters brilliantly.

Just sorry we will never get a conclusion because it ends on a knife edge.

The show starts slowly while trying to mix the past and the present and it creates the atmosphere to suck the audience in to the world. While you in it, you now stuck and obsessed in wanting to know more of what happens but wait they dont give you everything all at once but little by little like a doctors dose of medicine. Highly recommended for all banshee fans

...this is the new show for you.

Same dark and ominous feeling, same convoluted and interesting story line, same level of violence - and an elegant use of flash backs, to constantly evolve the story.

Abigail Spencer is playing the role of her life, and is performing a tour de force that leaves you thinking, that she is one of the coolest female protagonists in recent TV drama history.

I found this show by chance, and having watched the first season, I highly recommend it.

Reprisal is an incredibly fun and well acted thriller about revenge. It will hook you from the start and keep you entertained throughout the series! I didn't really know what to expect but I'm so glad I gave it a chance because I was pleasantly surprised!

This started off a little slow for me, it wasn't until episode 4 that it picked up for me. I noticed a lot of reviews complaining about the discrepancy in what decade this was in, but it is supposed to be vague, sort of like Riverdale or Gotham. Kind of an alternate universe, that's why you can't pin down what era it's set in. I love revenge stories like John Wick, and one with a female lead is refreshing, without going to the "I Spit On Your Grave" tropes. I'm all in for season two.

Hold on a sec. Relax. This isn't deep TV watching here. This is payback. Bloody, planned, years in the making, you got whats coming; payback. And even better.... a femme fatale that does it all.

If you like Sons of A, Outsiders, Mayans, etc... give this a watch. There are some scenes that will give you chill where you feel the cold bliss of vengeance.

That's what this is about. Don't make it to be something more. Its bloody good as it is.

(and when she doesn't hesitate to pull the trigger instead of a long soliloquy about why shes going to kill you, or long winded pleading by the one about to be killed.... you see a true killer at work. Quick. Done.)

Katherine Harlow (Abigail Spencer) is left for dead by her murderous brother Burt Harlow, leader of the Banished Brawlers. Years later, she re-emerges as Doris Quinn as she seeks her revenge. Matty (Rhys Wakefield) leads a trio working for the Brawlers. Meredith (Madison Davenport) is a schemer working the strip bar.

This is lots of style. It's super pulpy. I can't quite call it style over substance. There is some substance here but it's moving at a slower pace. That's why it seems like the style is lapping the substance. It would also be helpful for Katherine's story to be cleaner at the beginning. She doesn't need as much back story as she has. She just needs to be a B out of hell. The only back story she needs is the opening where she's left to die. The first couple of episodes are a bit too confused. All in all, I love the style. I do wish the substance to move faster but the style compensates for that.

Great story, solid crew and great execution. the story is not familiar and that's what makes it very attractive show. They way showed the history of every character in the show was just brilliant. Season 2 is a must. I can talk about it till tomorrow. Go and watch it and trust you'll enjoy.

As a response to Evme from 2019 who asks where are the scars on Doris, the lead female character, if you're looking closely, they show on the back of her neck.

Another response goes out to several people who didn't seem to understand the anachronistic aspects, with cars from 4 different decades, clothing and hairstyles from the 50s, but cellphones, too; I'm pretty sure this is a comic, fantasy world. Why my belief: one episode begins with a war in The Archipelago. Pretty such this is a fictional war?

Characters are crazy, but still sympathetic. I love the old cars, clothes, music and pinup girl stuff!

To my mind, this show is evoking, rather than actually set in the 1950's.

Stylish, slick production. Great acting and dialogue, resulting in an engrossing yet slightly creepy, noir vibe.

Could have been a 9. I cut down a couple of stars due to its slowness and dragging out too much in some scenes in the middle. However, it is still a good show to binge-watch.

It was really good until they tossed together an ending with half the storyline unfinished...

If you like Fargo season 2 (one of the best seasons of television ever in my opinion), Banshee, with a backdrop of early Sons of Anarchy, you'll love this.

It's got a great story, great characters, an interesting way of telling the story in a Quentin Tarantino-ish sort of way, with interesting flashbacks to flesh out the characters, and just overall a great time.

Very hard to find shows like this. I wish it would have been advertised more. I just happened to see a trailer while watching another show on Hulu, and took a break to watch this, binged it in two days, and went back to the other one, but have yet to see another trailer for this.

If you like this, get the word out so more people watch this as I fear it won't have a season two which I would love to see.

Sure ultra violence has reared its head in Tarantino-esqe fashion in a lot of "TV" these days (The Boys, Watchmen, Peaky Blimders Etc) but how they have tied music, cinematography, and dialog together to pull me through 10 episodes of one of the best things I've watched in this very young year makes me excited for season 2.

REPRISAL by Armen Pandola

Binging TV series has introduced us to a new phenomenon - the moving on decision. Say a series is ten episodes long. You have watched the first episode and it seems like the kind of TV series you like. So, on to episode number two. You like two, but not as much as you thought you would. Maybe it gets better. Episode three is good, better than two but not as good as one. So, you try one more - episode four. That is the key episode. If you go on to episode five, you have gone past the point of no return. Five episodes and you are stuck - you have to go on.

Reprisal got me to episode five and I was stuck. I went with it to the end, but every episode was a decision - to go or stay. There was just enough glitz and shine to keep me from turning it off before the next episode flashed on, automatically - it was a decision made for me rather than an affirmative action on my part. And Hulu knew enough to start the next episode off in mid-action rather than with credits - I may have turned it off if the credits came first.

Hulu's Reprisal has an excellent cast. Abigail Spencer is Katherine Harlow / Doris Quinn, a woman who is part of a criminal gang, but has been tortured and thought killed by her brother, Burt (Rory Cochrane). As they say when Hamlet thinks of killing his usurper/step-father near the beginning of the play - if he does, there is no play, And so Katherine is not dead but returns as Doris to get revenge.

She picks up a pair of uber-thieves, Earl (Craig tate) and Cordell (Wavyy Jonez) and concocts a scheme to rob the gang's front, a strip club called Bang-a-rang, owned by Burt. She cons a young man, Ethan Hart (Mena Massoud) into infiltrating the gang. Queenie (Lea DeLaria) runs the place and is a kind of den mother to the strippers who work there, one of whom is Burt's daughter, Meredith Harlow (Madison Davenport). Ron Perlman shows up at the beginning and end of the series as a mob boss and does his usual excellent job of looking bad, yet sounding reasonable.

There's a lot of blood and beatings that would put The Rock in traction for a month, but, in Reprisal, turn out to be scratches that barely make a mark on the victims. I don't know about you, but these phony violent scenes are getting old. Hollywood has come 360 degrees - at the birth of talkies in the early 1930s, Hollywood set up a 'code' that didn't allow for the victims of violence to bleed. For the next 40 years or so, characters died from gunshot wounds and beatings that left no wounds, no blood. Then, Sam Peckinpah and others brought blood back to the screen. Now, we have gallons of blood and dozens of wounds, but no real injury. Somebody gets pummeled in the face with too many punches to count and the next minute is fine.

After watching this series, I read what its makers said it was about since I couldn't make out any theme:

"At its core (Reprisal) is about family. A family that seeks to destroy each other," executive producer Warren Littlefield claims. "And the family that you build in order to survive and thrive. There will be themes that will be recognizable. It's quite universal, actually."

And the NY Times offers this: "If you like the combination of violent action, sentimental fantasy, literary pretension and periodic slapstick humor that Reprisal offers, you may enjoy it well enough."

In the end, Reprisal is a mish-mash with cell phones and pay phones and 1950s cars, 1980s hot pants and contemporary music. There is something for everyone and enough to keep you clicking to the end, but that's about it. Like Rocky, Reprisal goes the distance, but barely.

Ten for originality. Looking for boilerplate studio formulas, this is not for you. A simple vengeance plot is meticulously displayed with many nuances and luckily for us the twists compound on each other. What I like is the attention to detail and the creators' choice to throw some rules right out the window. Anachronisms don't exist because the period is damn impossible to pin down. Flip phones, texting, and computers are in use, but music references are from the 70s mostly, cars from 50s, ratrods stretching about 5 decades, retro barn entertainment imitating the 30s, and best of all fabulous, fabulous burlesque which, on its own, is reason enough to watch this show. Using a constant pull between soft dialogue and brutal violence creator Josh Corbin has succeeded at making this a tension masterpiece. Like Hitchcock, not every scene is blood-spattered, but you feel the horror of drawn out anticipation. Acting is top notch. Lea Delaria is wicked and a bit androgynous. I want to be Rory Cochrane's character in my fantasy. But my award for excellence in all categories goes to Madison Davenport who could have just relied on knockout looks but instead acts like someone who studied Bette Davis movies all her life. The show makes a simple plot very clear and very entertaining. In other hands it would have ended up looking like trashy kitsch. Instead, this is as close to opera as Netflix can get.

The only reason I hung in for all 10 episodes was because I wanted this show to get better, but it actually kind of fizzled out at the end. A lot of first rate world building was wasted because the writers just didn't seem to know what to do with what they had. The major problem was underdeveloped characters. This should have been Abigail Spencer's show. She gives the performance of a lifetime (even if she's often failed by the writing), and every time to show shifts its focus away from her it suffers. Mena Massoud may be a goof actor and it was down to lack of material, but his character Ethan is pretty much all brown puppy dog eyes, pained expressions, and hair. The writers never made me care about his problems. Same with Madison Davenport's Meredith. Almost nothing happening back at the Bang-a-Rang was all that compelling, compared to Doris's journey. Her crew crackled with all the energy the Banished Brawlers should have. This show could have been great. it should have been. But, no.

If you like rat rods, burlesque, a modern yet 50's era rockabilly theme with a "Tarantino-esque" feel (no offense to the actual creator) this is one series you'll love. Can't wait until a (hopefully) season 2.

This is for you!

No safe spaces, here! Old time Hollywood, no Hollywood agendas.

Good show, strong cast. But... Can't have a show set in the 50's and police pull people over in a 90's automobile and use cell phones? Its a bit confusing.

Hulu announced in April 2020 that they won't be renewing Reprisal for a 2nd season. Beyond disappointing- great content with a brilliant female lead. Craig Erwich (Hulu's content lead) should be ashamed of himself.

The art direction is some of the best going round. The style, costume designs, vehicles & sets are all heavily 50/60's influenced, with references of that time period in the dialogue- but they characters have mobile phones. As the show creator described- it's era ambiguous.

It's dark, fun, violent, sexy - with a stellar cast & performances. Abigail Spencer is wonderful as the lead- a femme fatale out for revenge- yet so prim, reserved & lady like. It's slow & subtle - until it's not!

Reprisal offers a violent road trip with lots of nostalgia noir eye candy but there's not a lot under the hood.

Essentially, this series runs on bare knuckles exposition, with a little slick pseudo sophistry, to lighten the leaden load.That's not to say its all bad, just don't expect as much as its glossy exterior suggests.

It sports a decent cast, convincing acting and well choreographed fight scenes and some run and gun.Intelligent scripting would have helped too but, I guess, you can't have everything.

In short a moderately watchable Basic Sin City knock off. 6/10 from me.

Until this year, I had never even heard of this show. And I think neither have most people, which is a shame cause Reprisal is one of the best shows I've ever seen! First off: I really like slow-paced, dark, character-driven dramas with morally grey characters and Reprisal is just that. The decade-ambiguous retro setting with influences from different eras from the 1950s to the 1990s creates an intriguing and unique look for this show that just has you hooked. The often dreary, gritty, neon-sign-lit world is a perfect backdrop for this story of revenge, family and gang warfare. This show is slow-paced but always has a sense of foreboding looming over everything and develops an undertow that just makes you want to keep watching. The cast and characters are amazing. Everyone is morally grey and none of them are exactly good people but they still manage to make you care and root for these characters who all have distinct and interesting personalities. If you've liked Banshee (which is one of my favourite shows) you'll definitely enjoy Reprisal too! It really pains me that this didn't get a second season, especially because I think the lack of success came from the nonexistent marketing rather than the show not being well received. It was truly a breath of fresh air and just different and original. I would have loved to know how the story continues, but even with a somewhat open ending (the most important thing gets resolved but other storylines end on a cliffhanger), I loved the series and will definitely watch it again soon.