BET's Michael Vick Project a Little Too Redemptive

Critics agree BET's The Michael Vick Project is conveniently focused more on the NFL star's comeback than on the horrid crime that laid him low in the first place. Still, some find the 8-episode "quasi-documentary" appealing:

• Vick presents himself as reformed, Robert Lloyd writes in the Los Angeles Times, but in visiting his old dogfighting compound, he " seems more nostalgic than contrite." No matter. "For many, his redemption will be strictly a matter of his playing football well. And if he doesn't, well, at least he won't be shot, drowned or hanged for it."

• Hank Stuever is kinder. "Far from a defensive vanity project, the show turns out to be more of a cautionary, don't-do-as-I-did story of athletic success and moral failure," he writes in the Washington Post. Still, "there's too much about redemption and closure and not enough about the lingering biggies: poverty, race, education."
• "Maybe all anyone needs to know" about the "documentary series," David Zurawik writes in the Baltimore Sun, " is that the NFL quarterback's production company, MV7, is one of the producing partners." The series is "not a balanced portrait," but "hagiography." And yet, "I can't wait to see more."

(More Michael Vick stories.)