 The opening episode received poor reviews from "The Guardian"'s Sam Wollaston who branded it "lame, tired, predictable and uninteresting"; Christopher Hooton, of the "Metro", who described it as a "3-part disaster-piece" and "pretty much beyond repair"; and Paddy Shennan, in the "Liverpool Echo", who described the actors as "playing cardboard cutouts acting out a painful, pitiful pathetic and patronising plot".Writing in "The Stage", Harry Venning praised the first ten minutes before adding that the goodwill they generated "was squandered in the truly dreadful 50 minutes that followed".Tom Sutcliffe, in "The Independent" described it as a mis-scheduled children's programme, writing, "it's hard to see Sugartown as anything else, so guileless is its plotting and so jauntily empty of threat are its characterisations."