The Long Road Home (miniseries)

Maureen Ryan writing for Variety gave the show a mixed review pointing out some strengths but perceiving it to be painful to watch and propagandistic in tone at times with major weaknesses throughout. She lauds the show's success at depicting the logistics of war and creating empathy for American soldiers and the ethical choices they were faced with during their missions in the US Invasion of Iraq. She however finds that these intimate psychological portrayals of extreme situations lack well written characterisations of the protagonists one is made to empathise with, though she does laud the actors for their performances of these roles finding the fault in the writing of the show. To her dialogue is cumbersome and cliché and the scenes away from the battlefield are superfluous and needlessly stretch the show's runtime thereby sacrificing a lot of its watchability. Ryan observes the tone of the show to at times be highly propagandistic making the show itself almost feel like propaganda for either the United States Army or a "narrowly defined vision of America" whose ability to create any kind of poignant psychological effect however is foiled by the show's generic and predictable writing outside of combat scenes. According to her the show at times attempts to create empathy for the Iraqis and their experience of the invasion and subsequent massacres. These attempts fall short based on a lack of development for any single Iraqi character; a quality they supposedly share with most characters in the show.[10]