--- title: The West Wing Season One Review 15 Year Anniversary description: Fifteen years after writing a so-so review of 'The West Wing,' TIME's critic reflects canonical: https://time.com/3446387/west-wing-review-anniversary/ author: James Poniewozik article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-03T11:00:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:28:35.110Z article:section: History og:title: The West Wing Season One Review 15 Year Anniversary og:description: Fifteen years after writing a so-so review of 'The West Wing,' TIME's critic reflects og:url: https://time.com/3446387/west-wing-review-anniversary/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte28ba6a59f4d3390/6986a63dcd684850ef096bf9/west-wing.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: The West Wing og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The West Wing Season One Review 15 Year Anniversary twitter:description: Fifteen years after writing a so-so review of 'The West Wing,' TIME's critic reflects twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte28ba6a59f4d3390/6986a63dcd684850ef096bf9/west-wing.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # _The West Wing_ at 15: Walking, Talking — And Preaching by [James Poniewozik](https://time.com/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Oct 3, 2014 11:00 AM UTC  Martin Sheen as President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet on 'The West Wing' Martin Sheen as President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet on 'The West Wing'NBC/Getty Images by [James Poniewozik](https://time.com/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Oct 3, 2014 11:00 AM UTC _\[Aaron Sorkin’s\] ambitious new presidential drama,_ The West Wing _(NBC, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), like an ambitious presidency, swings wildly from the impressive to the insufferable._ _Sorkin’s tendency toward the dramatic is exacerbated by casting serial over-emoter Martin Sheen as Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, who makes his first appearance speaking in the voice of God. Bursting into a showdown with religious conservatives, Sheen quotes the First Commandment, then unburdens himself of a pair of minute-and-a-half speeches while Coplandesque music swells and the camera cuts to admiring staff members, in case we’ve failed to notice how darned inspiring he is. There will be no curtains left in this Oval Office once Sheen has finished chewing the scenery._ —_From_ _James Poniewozik’s review of the first season of_ West Wing_, from the Oct. 4, 1999, issue of_ _TIME_ A couple of years ago, when I and some of my fellow critics lambasted Aaron Sorkin’s _The Newsroom_ as being [speechy and sanctimonious](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/21/dead-tree-alert-blowhardball-the-not-so-special-comment-of-hbos-the-newsroom/), one defense I heard was: “Why didn’t they say the same things about _The West Wing_?” Answer: I pretty much did, as you can read in my initial review, based on the series pilot, from fall 1999. _The West Wing_ was and remains a far, far better show than the two Sorkin dramas that followed it, _The Newsroom_ and 2006’s [_Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip_](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1535853,00.html): its characters were better drawn, it had a sophisticated sense for making wonky policy topics lively and–though Sorkin can always make a sentence skip rope–he was never more rapid-fire brilliant than the four seasons that he essentially wrote the show single-handed. In 2007, I [put the show on my list](http://entertainment.time.com/2007/09/06/the-100-best-tv-shows-of-all-time/slide/the-west-wing/#the-west-wing) of the All-Time 100 TV Shows, and I’d probably do that again. When the show was at top form (“Two Cathedrals,” e.g.) it could be red-white-and-blue magic. (And all right—I was a little rough on Martin Sheen, who turned out to have a wry touch as Jed Bartlet.) But I was never as devoted to the show as some of my fellow critics; I [groused repeatedly](http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,167351,00.html) during the run of years that it beat out _The Sopranos_ for the Best Drama Emmy, and I’m pretty comfortable with that judgment. The show embodied the best of Aaron Sorkin’s work and showed signs of its worst excesses. But as with most original voices, you can’t have the one without the other. Nothing walk-and-talked quite like it. **_Read the full 1999 review, free of charge, here in TIME’s archives:_** [Capital Ideas](http://time.com/3450369/capital-ideas/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3446387/west-wing-review-anniversary/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3446387/west-wing-review-anniversary/"},"headline":"The West Wing at 15: Walking, Talking — And Preaching","datePublished":"2014-10-03T11:00:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:28:35.110Z","description":"Fifteen years after writing a so-so review of 'The West Wing,' TIME's critic reflects","url":"https://time.com/3446387/west-wing-review-anniversary/","keywords":["Television","review","aaron sorkin"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte28ba6a59f4d3390/6986a63dcd684850ef096bf9/west-wing.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"James Poniewozik","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/james-poniewozik/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte28ba6a59f4d3390/6986a63dcd684850ef096bf9/west-wing.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"The West Wing","caption":"The West Wing","creditText":"NBC/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3446387/west-wing-review-anniversary/","name":"The West Wing at 15: Walking, Talking — And Preaching"}}]}] ```