Episode 2 · Series · 26 October 2026 · Drama verdicts
A bold Cathy centred remake that earns 8 out of 10 despite the slow pace.
“They made the villain the hero.”
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They made the villain the hero, and the series lives or dies on whether that feels brave or wrong. Here it mostly feels brave. Cathy Ames moves to the center, Florence Pugh carries the risk, and the score lands at 8 out of 10.
Pugh is the headline for a reason, playing Cathy as a person making terrible choices rather than a flat monster. Hoon Lee as Lee is the quiet surprise, the cinematography and score give Salinas Valley real weight, and the idea of timshel, that you may choose not to repeat family sins, gives the drama a spine.
The pace will test people. Seven hours of slow, heavy, deliberate storytelling can read as immersive or dreary depending on your mood, and squeezing a roughly 600 page novel into seven episodes trims the Hamilton material and rushes the generational handoff.
That second week climb matters more than the soft opening. It debuted at number one on 6.5 million views, the weakest number one since March, then nearly doubled to 12.6 million, which is not what weak shows do.
Give it your evenings if you love prestige literary drama, slow burn family sagas, or the 1955 James Dean film and want a genuinely different angle. Skip it if you need pace every ten minutes or know the Hamilton cuts will bother you as a Steinbeck purist.
Not a perfect Steinbeck, but the most interesting kind of imperfect. Explaining Cathy costs her some mystery and buys her a soul, and that trade defines the whole series.
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