Alena Smith built Dickinson around a bet: that the poet who barely published in her lifetime could carry a television series if you let her talk like a teenager in 2019. Apple TV+ took the bet, and Dickinson ran for 30 episodes across three seasons, from November 1, 2019, to December 24, 2021.
Hailee Steinfeld plays Emily Dickinson. The show follows her as a daughter, a sister, a friend and a writer who wants to be the world’s greatest poet. That is the whole engine of the thing, and it runs hot for about two seasons.
Trailer, via Apple TV.
Hailee Steinfeld and the Dickinson house
The premise is narrow on purpose. Dickinson lives with her family in Amherst and pushes against what the era expects of a woman. Smith keeps the camera inside that house and the rooms around it: Edward Dickinson, played by Toby Huss; Austin Dickinson, played by Adrian Enscoe; Lavinia “Vinnie” Dickinson, played by Anna Baryshnikov; and Sue Gilbert, played by Ella Hunt. Jane Krakowski plays Mrs. Dickinson.
The cast is the show’s best argument. Steinfeld carries scenes that would collapse with a weaker lead, and Krakowski plays Mrs. Dickinson as a woman who has already made her peace with the rules her daughter is breaking. The family scenes land harder than the plot machinery around them.
Anachronism as the house style
Dickinson is built on anachronisms. Modern language, modern music and modern references drop into the 19th-century setting without apology. Smith uses them to make the past feel close instead of preserved.
It works more often than it should. When Emily argues about marriage or ambition in a modern register, the show gets at something a straight historical drama would bury under costumes.
The device also wears out. Once you notice the pattern, you can predict the beat: a period scene, then a needle drop, then a joke about how little has changed. The trick is the show’s identity, and it is also its ceiling.
Wiz Khalifa, John Mulaney and the guest list
The series kept adding names. In September 2019, Wiz Khalifa and John Mulaney joined the cast. In December 2019, Finn Jones and Pico Alexander came aboard. Jones plays Samuel Bowles, a newspaper editor; Alexander plays Henry “Ship” Shipley, a dropout and boarder with the Dickinsons. Matt Lauria had joined in a recurring role earlier, in January 2019. Will Poulter and Joe Thomas were considered for Bowles.
Some of these are stunts, and they read as stunts. Others stick. The show’s instinct to cast outward is not wrong, but it spreads attention away from the family, which is where Dickinson is strongest.
The supporting cast includes Amanda Warren as Betty and Chinaza Uche as Henry, both of whom get less room than the premise promises.
What Dickinson gets right about Emily
Dickinson treats the poet as a person with a body and a temper, not a monument. It takes her ambition seriously. It takes her relationships with her family, her friends and her society as the actual subject, and it lets gender roles, sexual identity and artistic expression sit at the center rather than the margins.
That is the show’s real accomplishment. Emily Dickinson is usually taught as a recluse and a set of dashes. Smith gives her a household, a rival, a sister who talks, and a room where she writes.
The weakness is that the series keeps explaining its own themes. When Emily names the thing she is fighting, the scene loses the tension it had when the fight was just in the room.
Three seasons, 30 episodes, one question
Three seasons is a reasonable run. It is also long enough to expose the limits of the concept.
- Season one establishes Emily and the house.
- Season two pushes the fame question and the guest cast.
- Season three has to land an ending for a life that has no clean ending.
The last item is the problem. Dickinson wants to be a coming-of-age story about becoming the world’s greatest poet, and it also wants to be a portrait of the era. Those two jobs pull against each other in the final stretch.
The verdict on Dickinson
Dickinson scores 6.6 out of 10. That is the published critical score, and it is about right.
The show is worth watching for Steinfeld and for the family scenes, and for the fact that it treats Emily Dickinson as a working artist instead of a legend. It is not worth watching for its plot, which gets thinner every season, or for its guest casting, which is more noise than signal.
The anachronism is the part people will argue about, and it is the part that matters least. What matters is whether the show makes you care about a woman writing in a house in Amherst. For two seasons, it does.
The thing to watch is not the modern music or the modern jokes. It is the moment Emily sits down to write and the show trusts that to be enough. When Dickinson trusts it, the series is better than its score. When it reaches for a bit instead, it is exactly its score.
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