NBC’s new procedural crime drama The Hunting Party’s negative reviews upon premiere suggest that critics were less than enthused.

This is rough news for The Hunting Party, although it doesn’t tell the whole story. While the series originally debuted with a 0% The Hunting Party’s season 2 renewal, it may need to address a few specific issues that caught most critics' attention.

The Hunting Party’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Is 18% - Why It’s So Low

Critics Aren’t Impressed By Its Formulaic Structure

Since its debut, The Hunting Party has slowly crept up in the ratings, but it remains far lower than desirable. The biggest issues many critics have are the show’s basic episode structure and archetypal characters, which they feel do little to differentiate The Hunting Party from more renowned case-of-the-week procedural shows. Three of the first four episodes follow extremely similar trajectories, during which reviewers failed to connect with any of the cast.

Processed Media:

In its current state, The Hunting Party is too leaden to be fun, and too predictable to really be shocking or exciting; but it’s less a matter of having incongruent pieces, than a series that just needs to recalibrate its tone and storytelling approach.

RogerEbert.com:

It’s so genuinely awful that I started to wonder how different a show produced by an AI given the same parameters would be. There’s so little personality or human touch to this one. It’s a show produced by algorithms and focus groups, a product with no pulse whatsoever.

AV Club:

Over these episodes, the characters are unremarkable at best and ill-defined at worst. They each have their own secrets and “dark pasts,” but the show gives viewers little reason to buy into their stories or, frankly, even care about their fates or the larger mystery surrounding what really happened at The Pit.

The one thing that could have saved The Hunting Party’s episode structure from evisceration by critics might have been each episode’s inevitable twists. Because The Pit was a classified project, the government is constantly withholding information Bex could use to profile her targets. But she always winds up receiving this information around the same place in each episode’s runtime, by which point many critics feel viewers will have already figured things out.

Decider:

Everything about The Hunting Party feels generic, from the premise to the structure to the characters to the dialogue. The first episode is filled with exposition and twists that we were able to predict before they happened. Even the twist in the case of Harris was easy to figure out, and seemed to be projected so early in the episode that it blunted the impact of the plot development.

Collider:

The series often plays it safe by going through the motions, leaving the impression that it might be faster to hire those watching the events unfold onscreen than the investigative team leading the search party. NBC's latest production offers just enough to keep true crime followers watching, but always seems to operate two steps behind the viewer.

Although these critical reviews paint a rather negative picture of the series, The Hunting Party hasn’t entirely failed to gain favor with some viewers. The show has much better numbers when it comes to the audience score.

The Hunting Party’s Audience Score On Rotten Tomatoes Is Much Better

Viewers Seem To Find The Central Mystery And Character Dynamics Compelling

At the time of writing, The Hunting Party’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes sits fairly high at 73%, leaps and bounds above its critical response. Although some s agree that the main twists regarding each killer of the week were predictable, many reviews are more hooked by the overarching plot than the weekly hunts. Each episode only provides one or two clues as to what happened at The Pit, and many seem engaged enough to wait out the rest of the first season’s 10-episode order for further answers.

s also found enjoyment in The Hunting Party’s principal cast. Some are previous Manifest fans who specifically signed on for Roxburgh, but even the comparatively minor Jennifer Morales (Sara Garcia) gets some shoutouts in the ratings. More than anything, viewers enjoy the rapport between the three leads comprising Bex and her team. Although the three frequently bicker regarding the proper course of investigation, they always return to being friendly colleagues at the end. This latter dynamic and the light-hearted scenes resulting from it have contributed greatly toward helping The Hunting Party gain a loyal following.

Does The Hunting Party Deserve Its Low Rotten Tomatoes Score?

The Series Is Quickly Recovering From Its Rough Start

A number of The Hunting Party’s positive ratings compare the procedural to series such as Criminal Minds, Hannibal, and The Blacklist. This is a bit of a stretch in of the show’s quality, but that’s not to say it can’t get there. While The Hunting Party’s clunky pilot more than earned its negative response, it’s been steadily improving with each episode. Some people felt lukewarm about episode 3, but The Hunting Party episode 4 contains the series’ most disturbing killer twist thus far while ending on a compelling hook regarding the mystery of The Pit.

In reality, The Hunting Party probably deserves a rating somewhere in between its critical and audience scores. Given the series’ recent improvements, it’s easy to feel like it was written off too quickly. However, it must be noted that some critics watched the first four episodes before writing their reviews. Regardless, The Hunting Party's steady improvements are enough to recommend giving the series at least that much of a shot, but it's up to the viewer to decide where they stand beyond that.

Sources: Rotten Tomatoes, Processed Media, RogerEbert.com, AV Club, Decider, Collider

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