Mirren Mack Is a Bright Spot in a Bland ‘Tale of Two Cities’
It wasn't the best of times.
Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is one of those Great Works of Literature that people have heard of, but most have never actually read. (Or, if they did read it, they skimmed sections in high school and promptly forgot pretty much everything about it – except that one line everyone can quote.) Unlike many of Dickens’ other works, this doorstopper of a novel is super plot-forward, featuring flatter, less interesting characters than, say, Ebenezer Scrooge or Miss Havisham, and requiring at least a passing familiarity with the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
This is a lot to say that, in many ways, MGM+’s new A Tale of Two Cities had an uphill climb ahead of it, no matter what it chose to do. To its credit, the series has its moments. The cast is solid, the dedication to the story’s period trappings evident. But there hasn’t been a TV adaptation of this particular Dickens work in over thirty years, and if this MGM+ offering is any indication, perhaps there’s a reason for that.
Because despite its best efforts, it fails to be memorable in any real way, existing in a weird limbo where it repeats the beats of a preexisting story without really asking you to care all that much about anything that’s happening.
