Woke: Season 1

"Woke doesn’t just feel redundant, but ranklingly under-thought. It’s not only that Woke is so politically tepid, although it’s that, too. It’s that the show cares so little to flesh out its protagonist, Keef Knight. ... There’s no reason why the results have to be so bland."

"Instead of leaning into moments where the audience might sympathize with Keef’s rage, Woke spins out his anger into something that is laughed at. Considering the poignancy of Keef’s reckoning, it’s an uncomfortable distancing—and the result is not reliably funny, either."

"There isn’t anything particularly refreshing about Knight and fellow creator Marshall Todd’s tepid comedy."

"“Woke” has a serious spine, but the tone is light, even goofy, as a dramedy so caught up in what it thinks are teachable moments that it often doesn’t succeed at either."

"Woke very much has a message about the complications of being black in a place that can be fundamentally hostile to blackness itself. Sometimes, it gets that message across in clever ways, while at others it seems as confused or out of step as Keef is."

"Initially having high hopes for Woke, I walked away not quite knowing who the intended audience was. And while the subject matter grabbed my attention, I had to wait until the final culmination for it to pay off."

"There's a lot about "Woke" that works because of the people in it, and the man who makes it, and not entirely due its execution, which begins a lot of conversations but doesn't pause or conclude them in ways that give the premise of the series its meaning."

"The show develops a bit slowly but deftly straddles the line between weightier matters and mining its sillier side."

"Charming. This can be credited in large part to Mr. Morris, who plays Keef with equal parts self-awareness and bemusement, but also to the balance “Woke” strikes between politics and the pure comedy of human interaction. Or collision. ... The music is remarkably good. The cast is even better."

"A version of “Woke” with fewer distractions — limiting or perhaps fine-tuning the comic device, and keeping its eye more closely on Morris’s performance — would be one that got its point across, and that entertained, far more effectively."

"Woke spends its 8-episode season nudging Keef toward his epiphany, all the while making necessary but not particularly interesting discoveries about the variety of micro- and macro-aggressions Black people face every day. ... The best scenes in Woke are between Keef and his roommates."

"Keef's inner struggles as a Black artist versus an artist who happens to be Black is an unapologetically funny and honest through line that also gives the show the authenticity it needs."