Critical response The premiere episode on September 14, 2020, was "a real emotional roller coaster" according to
Jezebels Rich Juzwiak. He added "The enthusiasm was massive, the veracity was questionable, the performance was distracting. She shifted gears in the next paragraph of her monologue to reintroduce herself, remind us that she is exactly who we think she is, and suggests that she's so much more. With the impassioned face of a celebrity raising funds on a telethon, Barrymore said emphatically that, 'I'm also someone who is learning all the time, and I'm so excited to figure out this thing called life with you!' Wait, that's what we're doing here?" Juzwiak also said that Barrymore has been a nonstop ball of energy, which can be exhausting and endearing. In a review of the first season,
Variety Daniel D'Addario said that Barrymore was hampered in her first week by her reliance on celebrity friends, saying "Barrymore's show is squarely in her comfort zone, ... but—speaking as a Barrymore fan who was excited to see her in conversation—there is as yet untapped potential for her to dig deeper, to show us more of what she really believes or finds important." In another first season review, William Hughes of
The A.V. Club said that there have been two major takeaways from
The Drew Barrymore Show after one week: "Drew Barrymore definitely has a lot of cool, famous friends, and Drew Barrymore sometimes acts in ways that are tremendously weird when asked to talk into a camera by herself. The combination has formed some of the most hypnotically, authentically strange TV the internet has had a chance to dine out on in a while, as Barrymore jumps between recreating famous movies she's made with her buddies, to monologuing, for minutes at a time, about her love of removing stains from T-shirts." Tracy Moore of
Vanity Fair said that it is remarkable that "something so offbeat is happening on daytime at all" of the "low-key insanity" of
The Drew Barrymore Show. Moore also said of Barrymore "She cooks; she interior designs; she feels. She talks in hashtags, and casually drops quotes from
Gayle King,
Patti Smith, and
e.e. cummings. She is, it seems, genuinely in awe of everyone and everything, a self-described 'human scrapbook of news,' a 'pop culture junkie,' a lover of people and stain removal." Jessica Toomer of
Uproxx proclaimed that 2020 was the year Drew Barrymore blew up the daytime talk show machine. Toomer added that "Drew Barrymore's show is all of those things. The kind of mind-numbing
social experiment that rivals the frenzied delirium of a
Safdie Brothers crime saga but interjects just enough
PBS-
after-school-special cheer to quiet the shrieking happening inside your brain as you watch. It's not pretty all the time. Sometimes, it's not even coherent. But like a 1994-era
Chloë Sevigny, it's the kind of "
It Girl" of the talk show universe that you just can't quite define, but know you should worship anyway." In September 2022,
The New Yorker profiled the show and its host ahead of its third-season premiere, expressing bewilderment that the show had been renewed given its ratings and commenting: "The Drew Barrymore Show" is too chaotic and destabilizing to feel manufactured. The show's open sentimentality—and copious shed tears—are offset by its crackle of unplanned clumsiness. Bouncing off the walls one moment and breaking down the next, Barrymore seems to be barely holding on as sentiment threatens to overtake her. She is not so much revisiting her past as dragging it along like a bindle full of lessons waiting to be discovered. If her off-the-cuff irrepressibility is an act, then it's the best performance of her life. Critical consensus was more positive after the 2022 format change, with one reviewer calling the show a "viral sensation," elaborating that "even if you are not interested in celebrities, there is a radical naivety to Barrymore ... that is joyful, unreflective and fun to watch. If you are interested in celebrities, these will be the most interesting interviews you've ever watched, with deeply personal confidences, from stars in their prime."
Ratings The Drew Barrymore Show did not sustain high ratings its first season. In its first season's second week, ratings for the program were down 14
%, at 600,000 viewers.
Hot Bench, the show that
The Drew Barrymore Show replaced in many markets, was steady at 1.7 million. According to an October 15, 2020, report from
OK! magazine, the show had already dropped 38% in ratings since it premiered. According to
The Hollywood Reporter, the ratings grew by 19 percent in households and 13 percent among women 25–54 in
Nielsen's metered markets between November 2020 and February 2021. For the second, 2021–22 season, the program drew an average of 740,000 viewers. In the third season, ratings improved significantly, averaging 1.21 million viewers—up nearly half a million viewers year to year. The third season of the program ranked as syndication's #4 talk show. Ratings subsequently improved, and as of its sixth season, it is syndication's #2 talk show.
Accolades ==References==