Reverie (TV series)
Reverie is an American science fiction drama television series. The series was commissioned on May 12 and aired through August 8, 2018. The first season of 10 episodes premiered on May 30, 2018 on NBC. On November 6, 2018, NBC canceled the series after one season. Premise. Former hostage negotiator Mara Kint, an expert on human behavior, takes a job saving people whose minds are lost in an advanced virtual-reality simulation, Reverie. In the process, Kint begins to work through a personal tragedy in her own past. Reception. Critical response. "Reverie" has received a score of  62% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10, and 42 on Metacritic, which uses a weighted score, based on 7 reviews. Writing for "Forbes", Merrill Barr was impressed at the "limitless potential" provided by the procedural format of a show he describes as a "high concept thriller" with "enough breadcrumbs laid out to entice the audience". IndieWire's Hanh Nguyen compares the show favorably with the darker British virtual reality series "Black Mirror": "The virtual reality setting is a blank canvas that invites play, and the procedural element of Mara regularly retrieving lost souls  gives the series an optimistic and hopeful bent. There's plenty of fun here, but with enough pathos to add weight." Conversely, "The Verge"s Adi Robertson, who also compares the show with "Black Mirror", was left cold by what she perceived as the broadly optimistic tone: "Audiences have gotten familiar with this kind of cautionary yarn, where technology offers a lonely simulacrum of human contact. But "Reverie"s pilot turns the idea toward optimism and earnest schmaltz—with extremely dull results." Shana Oneil, posting on /Film, was impressed by the premise, story, and acting, but also found the lack of hard  science as a potential problem: "The ideas are certainly there, along with the creepy science tech (the actual Reverie connection module squicked me out), but good science fiction needs truth to anchor it." Ratings. "Reverie" was the lowest-rated series of the NBC 2018 summer lineup, averaging just over 2 million viewers per episode.