The New York Times has issued a correction after its television writer panned a show for being confusing when he watched the first two episodes in the wrong order.
Mike Hale, the Times’ television critic, had criticised the “split personality” and “needlessly complicated structure” of the initial episodes of Amazon’s new legal drama Goliath.
The noirish series is co-created by David E Kelley – the producer behind Boston Legal and Ally McBeal – and stars Billy Bob Thornton as Billy McBride, a down-and-out lawyer.
Though Hale praised the “promising” opening episode as “quick, textured, with a sense of place” in the review, published in print and online on 14 October, he noted the show had an “odd, bordering-on-bizarre split personality”.
“The nature of the case McBride has taken on ... is revealed slowly and cryptically, a bit of writerly delayed gratification that keeps your attention but isn’t particularly rewarding,” wrote Hale, according to a screenshot of the original review archived by the Wayback Machine.
“Then, presumably because the first episode leaves so much unanswered, the next jumps back in time to fill in the history of the case — and when the second episode ends, the story hasn’t even caught up to where it started.
“The narrative juggling has the feel of stretching — of starting with a story suited for an episode of traditional TV or maybe a feature film and extending it to more than nine hours. Final judgment on that will have to wait until all 10 episodes are available.”
The NYT issued a correction on 18 October.
A television review on Friday about the new Amazon series Goliath included an inaccurate discussion of the show’s plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order.
The online review has had the above paragraphs removed. NewsDiffs, a site that collates corrections to online news article, has compared it with the original.
The Guardian has attempted to contact Hale for comment.