EPISODE
SEASON
SCHEDULE
Cruel Summer - Season 1
A small Texas town when a beautiful popular teen, Kate, is abducted and, seemingly unrelated, a girl, Jeanette, goes from being a sweet, awkward outlier to the most popular girl in town and, by '95, the most despised person in America.
April 24, 1992 in Dallas, Texas, USA
January 20, 1976 in Irving, Texas, USA
29 October 1977, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
July 8, 1999 in Houston, Texas, USA
7 March 1985, Alberta, Canada
April 14, 2021
The nonlinear narrative and shifting character focus mostly just obscure the unremarkable nature of the plot.
April 14, 2021
Thanks to an agile cast and a willingness to push for the unexpected response, Cruel Summer ends up a pleasant surprise: A show with a grabby premise but also a great deal on its mind.
April 15, 2021
The show piles on enough mysteries to make it intriguing and then answers some questions fast enough to be satisfying.
April 20, 2021
Shifting time settings can be a lazy way to shake up contemporary TV narratives, but it's rarely done as sharply as in the new teen series "Cruel Summer".
April 20, 2021
The device largely works as a set-up to explore, primarily, Jeanette's evolution, which, thanks to Aurelia's impressive performance, somehow manages to feel like an almost completely different character in each of the years visited.
March 19, 2021
An ambitiously told noir-tinged '90s period piece that weaves its way through three different timelines, 'Cruel Summer' is a 10-steps above your usual Freeform teen drama.
April 16, 2021
Cruel Summer is addictive and fresh - and with any luck, viewers won't get burned.
April 16, 2021
The filmmakers do a remarkably good job of telling this wild story cohesively, built on the often problematic flashback and forward framework.
April 16, 2021
That's one last thing that's good to know: moderation in all things. But moderation is not the point of a show like "Cruel Summer."
