Critics aren’t sold on ‘Tiger King’ drama ‘Joe vs. Carole’

For many people, Tiger King was the cultural touchstone of 2020. However, the new drama based on the Joe Exotic saga, titled Joe vs. Carole, isn’t doing well with the critics. 

Based on the true-crime podcast Over My Dead Body’s second season, this drama follows the legal case against Joe Exotic, or what happened after he was accused of plotting to kill Carole Baskin.

The show has an all-star cast, including Kate McKinnon as Carole Baskin, John Cameron Mitchell as Exotic, and Twin Peaks legend Kyle MacLachlan in a supporting role. 

However, despite all of this, the critics are berating the show. Many outlets and writers took to social media to talk about and promote their negative reviews of the drama. 

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Daniel Fienberg summarizes his review by saying, “there is NO reason to watch Peacock’s ‘Joe vs. Carole’.” In the article itself, Daniel savages the show saying, “I’d say it would have been better as a two-hour movie, but I’m not even sure that’s true. It just would have been shorter.”

Fienberg isn’t the only person expressing their dislike of the show. Critic and editor of the Roger Ebert website Brian Tallerico posted his review alongside an extremely blunt tweet sayng, “I actively hated Joe vs. Carole.”

His review describes the series as “abysmal” right out of the gate before expressing hope that the series will lead to the TV industry reconsidering “bloated, over-hyped, truly mediocre mini-series based on controversial stories that we already know.”

Entertainment Weekly shared similar thoughts, summarizing Kristen Baldwin’s review by calling the show “Peacock’s largely unnecessary retelling”. 

The review itself focuses on how the events covered all seem outdated now, describing them as “Public Domain Theater, with prestige reenactments of thoroughly documented events.”

However, not all the reviews are vitriolic, with many giving the series mediocre or average reviews. One such review comes from Collider’s Alyse Wax, who calls the series solid before saying, “If Tiger King was your version of the tale, Joe vs. Carole feels more like your parents’ version of the story, sanitized and surface-level.”

Ed Power’s review for The Telegraph bucks the trend further by giving the show a good score, surmising the series as an “utterly inevitable drama that piggy-backs on the waning interest in Tiger King. But, it turns out, it’s quite good”