Tanner '88 - Reception

Reception

Reviews for the miniseries seem to improve over time. In one of the earliest reviews of the pilot episode, The New York Times called the show an "interesting misfire" that "insists too much on its own sophistication about politics". The same paper held the second episode in higher esteem, calling it "humorous cinéma vérité" that's "slick and occasionally witty." In its "Best of 1988" look at television, Time magazine called it: "the year's definitive satire of media politics."

In a 2003 review of K Street, the New York Daily News said "Tanner skewer brilliantly the insanity and inanity of presidential politics." By 2004, Slate was saying:

More than a decade before the ascendancy of reality television, the series slyly blended fiction and documentary, with real-life political and media figures—Bob Dole, Bruce Babbitt, and Linda Ellerbee among them—crossing paths with, and commenting upon, Tanner's grass-roots campaign. But Tanner's formal complexity—a loose, layered blend of group improvisation, scripted set pieces, and the intervention of pure chance—manages to point up not only the laziness of reality shows like Survivor and The Bachelor but their moral and political vacuity.

In 2004, Altman said "I think it's the most creative work I've ever done."