Well, What Do You Think of "Kings"?

James Poniewozik in TIME magazine:

NBC's 'Kings': The New Old Testament

Is it better for a TV show to be consistent or surprising? Is it worse for it to be ridiculous or boring? NBC's unorthodox new drama Kings (Sundays, 8 p.m. E.T.) comes down solidly on the latter side of those questions. Some viewers will say it's fascinating. Others will say it's pretentious hoo-ha. Allow me to split the difference: Kings is fascinating pretentious hoo-ha.

The premise of Kings is unlike that of anything else on TV: a reimagining of the biblical story of David, set in the modern world...

...There's no getting around it: Kings is a bizarre, disorienting hybrid of a show. For starters, there's the language, half-contemporary, half-archaic: "We sign our names, we shake hands, and future ghosts know us for our contributions, not our wars," says Silas at a treaty negotiation. Kings is lucky to have McShane, who, as a philosophical criminal in Deadwood, effortlessly breathed out David Milch's mix of obscenity, frontier talk and Shakespeare. Here, leonine, menacing and thoughtful, he makes Kings' quasi-biblical declamations seem natural...

...Kings' setting — a cleaned-up version of Manhattan — is stunning. You're lulled by familiarity, then rattled by reminders — say, a scribe following on Silas' heels, scribbling hagiography on a tablet computer — that this is a very different place...

...Yet I'd rather watch Kings than a number of other less daring, more consistent dramas. Why? Because it surprises me and takes chances (like basing a drama on religion without being snarky or saccharine). Because it has ambitions that broadcasters have all but ceded to cable, and sometimes it even meets them. Because it creates a world rather than borrowing one. And because I'm willing to be patient with a show that has learned sling-wielding David's timeless lesson: Sometimes it pays to aim big.