Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dickinson’ On Apple TV+, Where Emily Dickinson’s Young Life Is Seen Through A Modern-ish Lens

One of the most interesting things about Emily Dickinson’s life is that she didn’t achieve fame until after her death, when two thousand of her poems, written in books and on scraps of paper, were found in a trunk in her room. Only a few of her poems were published during her life, most of them anonymously. She spent most of her life living in her father’s house, often secluded, and was famously fascinated with death. So what better topic for a dramedy with modern dialogue and a hip-hop soundtrack! Read on for more about Dickinson….

DICKINSON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A voice over goes “Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived throughout her life in her father’s house. Near the end of her life, she rarely left her own room,” as pictures of Dickinson, the house and her room slide on screen.

The Gist: As we see Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) staying up in the middle of the night, gesturing as she scribbles the words in her head on paper, her sister Lavinia (Anna Baryshnikov) knocks on the door and tells her it’s her turn to fetch water. “That’s such bullshit,” Emily says, signaling — along with the hip hop soundtrack — that the show may take place in the late 1850s but its sensibility is most definitely late 2010s.

Emily’s mother (Jane Krakowski) insists both Emily and Lavinia learn how to be experts at maintaining the house like she did; when Emily asks for the umpteenth time why the aristocratic family doesn’t get a maid, her mother responds by saying she takes pride in being a perfect homemaker, and so should Emily. Emily’s mom is worried that her daughter will die a lonely spinster, forever writing her poetry. So she tries to set her up with suitors, despite the fact that the last time she did, “you dropped a dead mouse in that poor man’s lap!” Emily replies, “I made an offering!”

But Emily is constantly fascinated with death, envisioning a ghostly carriage with her dressed in red. Her mom tries to set her up with George Gould (Samuel Farnsworth), who has an unending crush on Emily. Emily, though, is happy that this time the suitor is in lit club with her and her brother Austin (Adrian Enscoe). She hands him a poem to publish in the club’s literary magazine. She at first doesn’t want to have her name on it, for fear of angering her father Edward (Toby Huss), but George convinces Emily to go for it and put her name on her own work.

Austin has big news, too; he’s getting married to his girlfriend Sue Gilbert (Ella Hunt) and they’re moving to Michigan. Emily is beside herself, not just because Sue is her best friend, but she didn’t even think she liked Austin. But Sue tells her that, since her whole family has died from various diseases, Austin is her best bet to keep a roof over her head. But when the two kiss in the woods, we realize there’s another reason why Emily doesn’t want Sue to leave.

When Emily announces her first published poem under her name, Edward explodes with anger, thinking this is an embarrassment to the Dickinson name, a name he worked hard to rebuild after his father almost squandered what the family had built over generations. After that harangue, Emily dreams of joining Death (Wiz Khalifa) in that carriage, where he tells her that “your type of immortality won’t come from following the rules; it’ll come from breaking the rules.”

Our Take: The idea behind Dickinson, a modernized look at the life of one of America’s greatest poets, is an admirable one. To build a dramedy around a poet who had dark fascinations and a desire to not live her life like the rest of the women around her — she tells George she never wants to get married — is fresh, to say the least. The execution, however, is mixed at best.

Created and written by Alena Smith (The Affair), Dickinson has a big tonal problem. Is it supposed to be a funny application of modern mores and language on an 1850s setting, with slavery about to tear the country apart? The appearance of Krakowski, who plays Mrs. Dickinson as proper, determined, and flummoxed by her rebellious daughter all at once, would give us the indication that the show is supposed to be funny. Indeed, there are a few good laughs sprinkled through the premiere.

But, then again, there are highly dramatic moments like Edward’s speech about how he’s rebuilt the Dickinson name to the ruminations on death Emily has with, well, Death. Of course, many shows these days balance comedy and drama, but the swings are so wild one way or another, especially in the episode’s brief 35-minute run, we’re not sure what it wants to be.

We’re also not sure if Dickinson is aimed towards a young adult, CW-ish audience, with Emily and all the characters her age talking like quippy TV teenagers/young adults or if it really wants to be a show that truly wants to dive into the poet’s life and inner thoughts. Steinfeld does a fine job balancing all of the sides of Emily that are crammed into the first episode, but aside from her parents, none of the other characters seem like they belong in Emily’s orbit.

Sex and Skin: Not much, besides the aforementioned make-out session between Emily and Sue.

Parting Shot: After Edward comes into Emily’s room, saying the reason behind his anger is that “I don’t want to lose you,” Emily assures him that she’ll stick around. That relationship, of course, is going to be central to the show’s storyline. He goes to sleep in her bed, and she lies awake, finally getting up to write the poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.”

Sleeper Star: Huss, who is the second-billed star of this series, does a fine job with two emotional monologues in this opening episode. He’s done his share of drama, but he’s mostly known for comedy. But in this episode he shows just how good of an actor he really is.

Most Pilot-y Line: “What up, sis?” says Austin. “Nothin’, bro. Just chillin’,” says Emily. Listen, it’s fine to do modern dialogue, but this feels like more of a joke than anything else.

Our Call: STREAM IT, though we’re extremely on the fence about it. Dickinson has a lot that bears paying attention to, especially the performances from Steinfeld and Huss, but it’s such a tonal mishmash that it’s hard to figure out where the characters are going.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Dickinson On Apple TV+