Most critics come down in favour, and the praise clusters in the same places: Mike Nichols’s direction, Tony Kushner’s script and a cast led by Al Pacino as Roy Cohn. The warmest reviews argue that the six hours earn their length and that Nichols keeps the play’s theatrical scale while making it work as television. The acting is admired almost everywhere, including by critics who do not care for the whole.
The dissent is sharper than the numbers suggest, and it is largely British. The Guardian and The Times both find the piece verbose and pompous, with Gill calling Nichols’s direction uncritical, and The Telegraph judges that the play shrinks on the small screen even as the performances hold up. Even admirers concede that some of the staging, the angel sequences in particular, sits awkwardly on screen. The spread is wide, with little in the middle: critics either accept the scale as the point or name it as the problem.