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On Call: Season 1 Reviews

...the show juggles so many minor crime cases that the central narrative...gets sidelined.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 31, 2025

With ugly cinematography, bad writing, and generic acting, On Call comes off like a Prime Video cop show that graduated from the Netflix school of algorithm-driven slop.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2025

The show is trying to be sharp and immediate, using 30-minute episodes and body camera footage, but it ends up having little to say about the dynamic between the officers or wider policing issues.

Full Review | Jan 23, 2025

On Call offers enough moral ambiguity to make its characters intriguing and complex. While it may not be groundbreaking, it presents a grim, gripping portrayal of the harsh realities of urban life and the officers sworn to protect it.

Full Review | Jan 17, 2025

Its eight episodes are largely serialized and have the tense velocity that is the raison d’être for cop shows in the first place.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2025

Prime Video’s first police procedural has a few intriguing elements, but is too shallow and inconsistent to be memorable.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jan 14, 2025

Prime Video and Wolf Entertainment have outdone themselves with On Call, which is the perfect police drama for a modern audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 13, 2025

On Call has a nice pace to it, and the performances of Bellisario and Larracuente are understated and effective. Sure, it’s a police procedural, but at least its format and subject matter are a little different than what we normally see.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2025

These aren’t particularly bad cops, but they’re not as compelling as they need to be to break through in a flooded marketplace.

Full Review | Jan 10, 2025

On Call is here to change the game and bring an innovative twist on a genre of TV that we have seen time and time again. Elliot Wolf and Tim Walsh created a show that could refresh and renew the procedural theme.

Full Review | Jan 10, 2025

On Call understands the highs of network television and leans hard on the foundational elements that have built procedural dramas into the TV’s bedrock. It doesn’t reinvent its genre, but it does thrive in it.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 9, 2025

Instead of offering a compelling viewpoint, the series is stressful and often mechanical. Viewers are never let off the job, so there is limited motivation to clock in for the next episode.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2025

At no point is the Amazon Prime Video series complex or compelling enough to justify the 44 to 65 minutes you’d typically expect to invest in a police drama. But enough to pass 22 to 30 minutes? Sure. Why not.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2025

[It] is so intent on selling audiences on the idea that police are unfairly maligned and in danger every moment, of every day, that it forgets to tell a coherent or even fitfully entertaining story.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 9, 2025

“On Call,” to borrow a phrase from Miranda Priestly, is about as groundbreaking as florals at springtime.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2025

In the end, On Call is just another cop show.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2025

Troian Bellisario and Brandon Larracuente anchor Dick Wolf's straight-to-streaming attempt.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 9, 2025

Riddled with clichés and uninspired in its criminal underworld narrative, it's as boring as this genre gets — the episodes may only be half an hour, but they feel a hell of a lot longer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jan 9, 2025

For the most part On Call manages to pack a surprising amount of drama into such a lean package, and it raises interesting policing predicaments that characters disagree over without having to resort to preachy moralizing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 9, 2025

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