The reviews are uniformly warm. Most critics take to the show’s tone first: gentle, observational comedy that treats its characters kindly rather than mocking them, and several note how much less cynical it is than the half-hour comedies it resembles. The praise clusters on Ansari’s writing and on the episodes that deal with race and family, particularly the one about Indian actors on television and the one about immigrant parents, which critics single out as the sharpest and most humane material in the run.
The reservations are small and scattered. Variety finds the direction stilted in the early episodes; Vulture notes occasional underacting; The Telegraph thinks Ansari is a little too old for the millennial he is playing. Nobody is negative and the spread is narrow, running from good to very good. The two lowest scores, from Variety and Paste, are still recommendations, and Paste is judging on the premiere alone.