Most critics take to it, and the praise gathers in the same two places: Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan, and the way the series treats sex as a subject rather than a selling point. Reviewers who braced for a parade of nudity report instead an intelligent, assured period drama that stays restrained, even coy, and is better for it. More than one ranks it the strongest new drama of its season, and the office and medical strands are singled out for giving the research a life beyond the bedroom.
The reservations are narrower. The Guardian finds Sheen’s Masters too detached and one-dimensional, a portrait that leaves dramatic depth on the table, and The Independent, writing at the end of the first run, thinks the finale settles for cliché after a stronger penultimate episode. The lone dissenter is The Times, which finds the pilot solemn and uneven, with no real bond between its leads. Otherwise the spread is tight, sitting between good and very good.