Black Monday: Season 1

"The problem is that the market is short for either catharsis or humor on Black Monday and, given the options abounding on TV, audiences may not want to bet on a whole season."

"There’s hope yet for "Black Monday," whose first three episodes are carried across with confidence if nothing else; even when characters are delivering long and clumsily written chunks of exposition, they carry it off like tightly crafted David Mamet dialogue."

"There’s good raw material here. Just don’t buy until we see if the creative team can land on a consistent and satisfying tone."

"The “everything and the kitchen sink” approach taken by Caspe and Cahan pays dividends up front: Their episodes race by with loads of joyful enthusiasm, even as they’re laced with doomed morose."

"Sure, Black Monday needs to slow down every once in a while or risk exhaustion; when Rogen and Goldberg are behind the camera for the premiere, they transfer the chaos of the trading floor to practically every other setting, pushing things right up to the edge of shrill. In its first three episodes, the show hasn’t figured out a proper balance."

"Black Monday is peppered with stock characters, but thanks to the sharp writing and the skills of the cast, virtually every one of them is intriguingly offbeat and, not incidentally, flat-out funny."

"Black Monday can be very funny, very clever about incorporating 1980s cultural references (not counting the piles of coke and “Wolf of Wall Street”-style excess) and very vulgar. It’s also propelled by three extremely talented people, among them Mr. Cheadle, who makes Mo abrasive, egotistic and obnoxious, yet at the same time a sympathetic outsider."

"The comedy, starring an effervescent Don Cheadle, Andrew Rannells and Regina Hall, is an outrageous reimagining of what caused the Wall Street crash of 1987 and is packed to its coke-crusted gills with rapid-fire one-liners, not all of which work, but it doesn't matter because the one that comes three seconds later probably will."

"Black Monday's meta, madcap silliness works as a parody of the genre and a fresh take on an old story. It's a good investment."