Most critics like it, and the reviews cluster tightly around the low eighties. The praise goes first to the cast: Charlie Cox is credited with grit and self-doubt as Matt Murdock, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk is singled out again and again as the standout villain. Nearly everyone welcomes the darker, street-level tone, the unglorified violence and the fight choreography, which more than one review calls the best yet seen on television, and several critics reach for The Wire or The Sopranos as the comparison.
They part over how far that comparison holds. IndieWire thinks the series falls short of real depth even as it entertains, and The Hollywood Reporter is the lone mixed voice, finding pulp rather than noir, with implausible violence and a hero too easily beaten. Paste, unusually, gives the acting honours to Toby Leonard Moore rather than the leads. Otherwise the spread is narrow, from good to very good.