episodes. Cast members Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman returned, with Veena Sud as showrunner, and executive producers Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin returning as writers. Reception Critical response Reviewers and fans of the first three seasons noted similarities and borrowed elements from David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks and the follow-up film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and compared and contrasted Sud and Lynch's works. Season 1 The series premiere was praised by most critics. Metacritic gave it a score of 84/100 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 94% approval rating with an average rating of 8.5/10, based on 36 critic reviews; the website's critics consensus reads, "The Killing is a slow burning mystery with an eerie, mutli-dimensional story propelled by thoughtful writing, believable characters, and realistic horror, even if its season finale was unsatisfying." Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter gave the series a very positive review, calling it "excellent, absorbing and addictive. When each episode ends, you long for the next—a hallmark of great dramas." Goodman also praised Mireille Enos's performance as the lead character Sarah, saying, "It's not until you watch Enos play Sarah for a while that it sinks in—there hasn't been a female American character like her probably ever." Entertainment Weeklys Ken Tucker gave it a B+, saying, "The acting is strikingly good" and that "[s]ome viewers may find The Killing a little too cold and deliberate, but give it time. Its intensity builds steadily, giving the series unexpected power." Alex Strachan of The Vancouver Sun said the series "is soaked in atmosphere and steeped in the stark realism of Scandinavian crime novelists Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson" and that it "is not as much about a young girl's murder as it is a psychological study of what happens afterward, how a tight-knit community tries to recover and how a dead child's mother, father and siblings learn to deal with their pain in their own private ways." Matt Roush of TV Guide applauded the series, calling the acting "tremendous" and saying that he "was instantly hooked by the moody atmosphere of this season-long murder mystery set in Seattle." He went on to say, "What really stands out for me, in this age of cookie-cutter procedurals, is how The Killing dramatizes the devastation a violent death has on a family, a community, on the people involved in