One World: Together at Home special was positive but not overeager to perk us up, and earnest without ladling on schmaltz

Variety

"There were 19 separate music performances in the two hours of Together at Home, and each of the 19 had a different producer, essentially: the artists themselves," says Chris Willman of the two-hour special on ABC, CBS and NBC co-hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen "Jimmy" Colbert. "You never knew from one segment to the next how each musician would choose to present himself or herself. In the living room, or out in the grove? Vertical framing, or landscape mode? Folkie mode, or phantom orchestra? Trophy shelf in plain sight, or boxed up? Full makeup and styling or au naturel? (It was presenters Beyoncé and Michelle Obama, actually, representing a spectrum of possibilities there.) Pro cameras smuggled into the house and uploaded to a post-production FX house, or gutsy iPhone 5 grain? If leaving these act to their own devices isn’t the definition of 'variety show,' nothing is." ALSO: One World was a full-blown virtual Live Aid.