--- title: "Dickinson" year: 2019 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/dickinson" fi1m_score: 68 critics_score: 64 critics_reviews: 13 published: "2026-09-17T11:55:16.825273+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T11:55:31.663293+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Dickinson (2019) Created by Alena Smith · MPA TV-14 · Comedy, Drama **Fi1m score: 68** · Critics 64 from 13 reviews *In a sentence:* Amherst, 1850: nobody has heard of the twentieth century and everybody talks like it > Alena Smith’s comedy gives Emily Dickinson modern slang, a pop soundtrack and a carriage ride with Death, and the slang wears thin long before the poems do. Stay for Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Hunt, who play the love story straight and make the rest worth the effort. ## Synopsis Amherst, Massachusetts, in the 1850s. Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld) writes poems at night and is expected by day to fetch the water, help her mother (Jane Krakowski) run the house and find a husband. Her father, Edward (Toby Huss), forbids her from publishing a word. Her brother Austin (Adrian Blake Enscoe) has just proposed to Sue Gilbert (Ella Hunt), the closest friend Emily is in love with, and the marriage will keep Sue in the family and out of reach. Her sister Lavinia (Anna Baryshnikov) is busy with suitors. Emily persuades Austin to put one of her poems in the college paper under his name, talks to a bee in the garden, and takes a night ride with Death, who arrives by carriage. ## Review Alena Smith’s series takes Emily Dickinson and gives her a household that talks like a 2019 group chat. Her father forbids her to print a word. Death calls for her in a black carriage and she goes. That is the joke and the argument: that the poems are young, furious and funny, and that a century of lace-and-invalid biography has buried that. The joke wears thin faster than the show notices. The argument holds, mostly because two actors play it straight. Hailee Steinfeld’s Emily is quick, cross and never still, a woman who leaves a room in the middle of someone else’s sentence because a line has arrived. When it does, the words appear on screen in her handwriting while she says them half under her breath. It could have been twee. It is not, because Steinfeld treats writing as work she is impatient to get back to rather than a visitation. The bee she talks to in the garden is voiced by Jason Mantzoukas, and that is about as much whimsy as she will tolerate. Ella Hunt’s Sue Gilbert is engaged to Emily’s brother Austin (Adrian Blake Enscoe) and in love with Emily, and the scenes between the two women are the only ones where the slang stops. They are shot close, mostly at night, mostly in whispers. We were moved by them more than we expected to be, and what did it was Hunt: she plays Sue as the one person in Amherst who has worked out exactly how much she is being asked to give up, and lets that cross her face without the script pointing at it. Enscoe’s Austin is a decent boy who cannot see what is in front of him. Around them the family is a sitcom. Toby Huss’s Edward is pompous and frightened of his daughter in roughly equal parts. Jane Krakowski does the frantic hostess she has done before. Anna Baryshnikov’s Lavinia, forever between suitors, gets the best throwaway lines. Amanda Warren’s Betty and Chinaza Uche’s Henry have lives in the town the Dickinsons never think to ask about, and the series is better whenever it remembers them. Tim Orr shoots the house in candlelight and warm daylight, so the interiors glow brown and gold and every face in them looks a little too modern for the furniture. Loren Weeks and Neil Patel fill the rooms with period clutter. John Dunn and Jennifer Moeller cut the dresses to the right 1850s shape and then put them in colours no Dickinson would have owned. Drum & Lace and Ian Hultquist supply a hazy electronic score that sits under everything and is the most consistent thing in the series. The pop songs are another matter. They land on the punchline every time, and tell us what the scene had already told us. The anachronisms are the trouble. Death in a carriage comes from the poem, so it belongs. A dinner table where the young people call things lame does not, and the first season has a great deal of those. A dozen directors, among them David Gordon Green and Lynn Shelton, and seven editors share thirty episodes, and the seams show: a farce about a party gives way to an hour about a funeral. Some evenings a gag about how the 1850s were just like now made us wince, and then a poem appeared on screen and we forgave it. That is the pattern. *Marie Antoinette* put trainers in Versailles; [*The Favourite*](https://film.one/film/the-favourite) gave its court modern swearing. What Smith adds is the poems, and the writers’ room she assembled, which includes Ayo Edebiri and Ziwe Fumudoh, is better at jokes that come out of the text than jokes that come out of the calendar. The later seasons are steadier, and the Emily and Sue story goes places we will not describe. Give it two episodes. If the dialogue has not driven you off by then, it will not, and what is underneath is a love story and a working writer, both played without irony. There are three seasons of ten episodes each, and the first is the roughest. *Fi1m score 68, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (13) - **Vulture**, Kathryn VanArendonk (90/100, inferred): The critic embraces the show's absurd, queer, high-school-comedy-infused revisionism, portraying Emily as a messy, horny, death-obsessed goth goofball who humanizes the historical figure through anachronistic humor and self-determination. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/dickinson-apple-tv-review.html) - **The AV Club**, Shannon Miller (B): The series offers a spirited but flawed reintroduction of Emily Dickinson, mixing period drama with a modern, Drunk History-like tone to make the icon approachable and fun for younger audiences. It commends the queer elements and ensemble but notes some tonal inconsistencies. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/dickinson-is-a-flawed-but-spirited-reintroduction-of-a-1839345311) - **The Times** (75/100, inferred): The show recasts the reclusive poet as a millennial partygoer and charismatic queer feminist icon who swears, drinks and chafes against patriarchy. The reviewer expected to hate the reinvention but instead likes and respects it for bringing her work to new viewers. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/emily-dickinson-a-poet-for-the-insta-age-npkrkqxd2) - **Empire**, Boyd Hilton (70/100, inferred): The critic finds Dickinson a surprising and frothy quirky sitcom-like take on the poet's life, praising Steinfeld's charm that drives it forward despite some self-conscious quirkiness. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/dickinson/) - **IndieWire**, Libby Hill (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Hailee Steinfeld's energetic performance as a rebellious young Emily Dickinson in this unconventional Apple TV+ comedy that blends modern anachronisms with 19th-century setting. It highlights the fun, queer, and irreverent take on the poet's life and relationships. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/dickinson-review-apple-tv-plus-hailee-steinfeld-1202185430/) - **Radio Times**, Radio Times Staff (3/5): The review notes the series' attempt to make the poet sexy and appealing to millennials with modern slang and music, but finds some elements jarring; it praises the focus on Emily's relationship with Sue as the best scenes. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/dickinson-apple-tv-review/) - **Variety**, Caroline Framke (50/100, inferred): The critic sees it as a strange, scattered re-imagining that struggles to commit to a tone, but highlights Steinfeld's strong performance as the biggest strength, especially in portraying Emily's intelligence and relationships. [Read](https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/dickinson-apple-review-hailee-steinfeld-1203383873/) - **The Guardian** (30/100, inferred): The series is a half-baked comedy that rewrites Emily Dickinson as a defiant modern feminist who ignores chores and uses clunky dialogue. It praises Hailee Steinfeld's performance and the potential for absurd comedy but questions what the anachronistic approach adds. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/29/dickinson-review-emily-dickinson-reborn-as-a-lizzo-loving-feminist) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Robyn Bahr (30/100, inferred): The review criticizes the tonally incongruous revisionist take as reductive and pseudo-feminist, though noting some verve and Steinfeld's performance; it singles out the anachronistic elements and lack of depth on her genius. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/dickinson-review-1250292/) - **Paste**, Alexis Gunderson (9.1): The critic calls it a rapturously anachronistic coming-of-age ecstasy trip, praising its fun, strange, original mood setting and confident vision that makes the poet's inner world legible to modern audiences through contemporary elements. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/dickinson/dickinson-review-apple) - **Den of Geek**, Kayti Burt (3.5/5): The show is a stylish, feminist, and queer romp that irreverently sends up historical dramas with contemporary flair, though its first episodes show tonal uncertainty between comedy and serious themes. It has strong potential to develop further. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/dickinson-review-spoiler-free/) - **The Ringer**, Alison Herman (70/100, inferred): The series is the most ambitious and strange of Apple TV+'s launch shows, recasting the poet as a rebellious teen chafing at gender roles with anachronistic flair. It remains uneven overall but grows in confidence and ultimately inspires more fascination than disappointment. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2019/11/06/tv/dickinson-apple-tv-plus-hailee-steinfeld) - **Collider**, Allie Gemmill (★★★): The critic finds the series fun, youthful, queer, and eccentric, praising Hailee Steinfeld's performance as a ray of light in a modern anachronistic take; however, notes some heavy-handed feminism and on-the-nose needle drops as minor flaws. [Read](https://collider.com/dickinson-review-apple-tv-plus-hailee-steinfeld/) ## Details - **Created by:** Alena Smith - **Creator:** Alena Smith - **Director:** Silas Howard, Stacie Passon, Christopher Storer, Lynn Shelton, Rosemary Rodriguez, Rachael Abigail Holder, Heather Jack, Patrick Norris, David Gordon Green, Keith Powell, Alena Smith, Laura Terruso - **Writer:** Alena Smith, Robbie Macdonald, Ken Greller, Rachel Axler, Sophie Zucker, R. Eric Thomas, Ayo Edebiri, Ali Waller, Ziwe Fumudoh, Yael Green, Francis Weiss Rabkin, Darlene Hunt, Hayes Davenport - **Cinematography:** Tim Orr - **Editor:** Kyle Gilman, Camilla Toniolo, Mollie Goldstein, William Henry, Jesse Gordon, Anthony Muzzatti, Alex Minnick - **Music:** Drum & Lace, Ian Hultquist - **Production design:** Neil Patel, Loren Weeks - **Costume design:** Jennifer Moeller, John Dunn - **Producer:** Jordan Murcia, Robbie Macdonald - **Cast:** Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson; Toby Huss as Edward Dickinson; Adrian Blake Enscoe as Austin Dickinson; Anna Baryshnikov as Lavinia 'Vinnie' Dickinson; Ella Hunt as Sue Gilbert; Amanda Warren as Betty; Chinaza Uche as Henry; Jane Krakowski as Mrs. Dickinson - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-14 - **Release (the US):** 1 November 2019 - **Genres:** Comedy, Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DiO48qkKmg ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: streaming, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, SE, SG, TH, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *A Quiet Passion* (2016): Terence Davies’s Dickinson, with Cynthia Nixon, is the sober version; see both and argue - *The Great* (2020): Catherine of Russia swears, drinks and schemes; the same trick, played longer and nastier - *Marie Antoinette* (2006): Sofia Coppola put trainers in Versailles first, and got shouted at for it - *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* (2019), Fi1m 89: Two women, one house, no slang; the love story Dickinson is reaching for — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire.md) - *Bright Star* (2009): Jane Campion’s Keats, for anyone who wants the poet young and the poems on screen --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/dickinson