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The Holiday (2021)
A series only its mother could love...
It is easier to understand why this turned out to be so bad when you realize any of the characters saying or doing anything a normal person would in their situation would have wrapped up the series in 5 min or less... so obviously they had to entirely avoid that.
The only people who might enjoy this series are those that watched shows like The Jerry Springer Show so they could feel better about themselves by watching the worst specimens on the planet behave badly and feeling good in comparison.
The only reasonable explanation for the awful ending is that by the fourth everybody had realized this was really, really bad and decided to abort prematurely with a symbolic "burn it down".
The Capture (2019)
Typical Peacock fare for US audiences not for UK.
Too bad BBC picked this up because it is nowhere near the quality of the political thriller dramas it has produced. This is like a cheap CW imitation of 24 with the usual Peacock formula. Whispered voices with annoying music to create drama instead of writing a strong script. Poor directing, bad audio engineering, etc.
The premise was good for the first season which was still over-rated from a heavy social media spend by the network.
The second season is a disaster despite the stellar cast. Holly Grainger is a fine actress but this one has her acting tongue-tied and stupefied most of the time and clearly she was suffering from laryngitis because as soon she starts to yell, she is screeching like finger nails on a chalkboard. Her boss Lia Williams acts like she is suffering from indigestion after swallowing a hamster whole for the entire show. Rest of the cast act as if they are poorly paid extras.
Paapa Essiedu is the only one that offers some credibility amongst the characters despite the script with some excellent acting.
La casa de papel (2017)
Wish they had stopped after Season 3
What started as an entertaining heist series with some unique characters and intelligent script turns into the dumbest, cliched, poorly scripted with idiotic filler shots just to fill time that strongly resembles the stupid Cinemax "action" shows of the past.
All through to the end of Season 5, every time you think it cannot get any worse, it does in spades combining the worst of telenovela genre with predictable scripts and action sequences.
What a waste of actors and money for the high expense production.
If the Berlin spin-off is similar to the forced branching out in Season 5, it will be a very short lived series. Sad.
Partner Track (2022)
Complete and utter fail
If SNL did a spoof of Emily in Paris while on the set of The Bold Type, the writing, acting and production would be 100x better than this nonsense of a show.
If the script was generated by ChatGPT after being trained on some of the worst TV series in history, this would be an accurate output.
It can only be written by writers who don't have a clue of law firms, of relationships or pretty much anything beyond soaps with actors that don't have a clue about acting.
The stereotypes are beyond parody and cheesy and every episode has cringeworthy moments.
Not a single episode evoked laughter, or sympathy or any emotion towards any character and that is really hard to pull off. Congratulation on that.
Sheesh.
Sanditon (2019)
ChatGPT would have written a better Jane Austen knock-off
This show is like finding a designer bag knockoff in a dingy sidestreet. Looks like the original from a distance but fails in all possible ways when you look at it closer. Season 2 is CW level fluff.
It is both a testament to the genius of Jane Austen in truly understanding the context of the days without making the characters dumb or stupid and a testament to the inadequacy of the writers that just resort to the latter to create a poor imitation.
Shamelessly manipulative with every soap opera trick, wooden acting like a school play, repetitive and prolonged story lines to stretch to a whole series, etc.
Perhaps some Austen descendents should sue for being such a bad imitation.
A few stars for the production effort.
The Terminal List (2022)
Really bad gun porn with a shallow story
Worse than typical Cinemax fare. If one gets off on FPS type of action this is the porn for them with a ridiculous and cliched story to pretend it has one.
Vet with PTSD and medical affliction which haunts him selectively when the script requires it, corporate evil, senator wanting to shake the system... there is nothing in this series that is new. But you don't need to do anything if your goal is just to shoot gun porn. In present time and flashbacks.
Shootings here, there and everywhere. Bodies pile up in houses and streets. Nobody seems to care much.
The old vengeance/vigilante cliche with a license to kill anybody, law enforcement playing cameo roles....
If the gun industry had an awards show like the adult video industry, this would get the top honors.
Imdb is the only site with highly positive reviews on this while it is universally panned everywhere. So much for review integrity.
The Undeclared War (2022)
Worth watching despite flaws
This isn't for the Tom Clancy crowd that identify with white macho protagonists with explosions and chases.
This isn't for the LeCarre crowd that identify with the cold war style spy vs spy drama.
It is better than the negative criticisms here and perhaps not as flawless as the highly positive criticisms suggest.
It is an intelligent script in unchartered territory of a cyberwarfare thriller that attempts to make a difficult to visualize plot in a creative way. Someone provided the technical info to set it in a realistic and plausible script. It succeeds in not getting bogged down in geeky stuff.
What appears to have sabotaged it is the constraints and requirements set by the production companies - small chunks amenable to commercial breaks keeps things superficial, requirements for human drama and diversity leading to sloppy casting decisions, etc. The latter also incites negative reactions from explicit or implicit bias of some of the audience. Whether it is agism, racism, ethnophobia or whatever.
Despite some flaws, it is worth a watch unlike most Peacock fare.
Ruxx (2022)
An attractive cast of characters ruined by a telenovela script
The few stars are for the cast and production.
Viewing this is like going to a McDonalds in Bucharest. Yes, you know you are in Romania and people and signs aren't American but...
Problem with producers and writers trying to move beyond the legacy of a country's entertainment staple is that they really don't know what to replace it with and so throw in a mix of global themes "dubbed" in local dialect. Unfortunately, that does reflect a new generation that rejects the old but don't know what to replace it with other than anglicized styles and mores.
This show tries to be an "Emily in Bucharest" mashed with typical Latin show scripting that make characters alternate between passive and emotional outbursts intent on self-sabotage just to create stupid and meaningless drama. Not wishing to stop there, the script forcefully throws in pop scripting on social issues whether trying to find redeeming value or making the show relevent in contemporary times but failing in both.
An extremely shallow attempt.
Devils (2020)
A low budget imitator of Billions
If CW decided to create an imitator to Billions, this would be the result. With no Sorkin to provide a deeper understanding of finance, it remains a shallow version throwing about finance terms with very little reality other than make a statement some people will do anything to make money. They keep killing people when they think it gets too boring. And, of course, the 24 like talking in barely above whispers at times as a substitute for drama.
Characters are wooden with inane dialogs. Borghi always looks like he stepped out of a Just for Men photo shoot and is trying hard to remember lines. Dempsey always looks like he just arrived on an overnight flight he mostly drank through.
Short shots to allow commercial breaks at any frequency which is what differentiates network TV from streaming TV making it necessarily shallow and to hide the fact that low budget series are primarily people standing around talking.
The second season has tried to save even more money by frequently sampling network TV news broadcasts.
Shallow and boring.
Los herederos de la tierra (2022)
Dumbest set of characters assembled for a show
The only stars are for the production value (location, cinematography, score, location) that takes a very flawed script and story and displays it with a straight face.
If the intent was to depict the suffering caused by religion in the medieval period, making every man cruel or a total dumbass with no principles or morality and woman jump in to have sex with them regardless of marital status isn't the way to do it. The only intent seems to be to create sufferance-porn in the way one might do a sadistic prison movie where misfortune and suffering is the point.
The story seems to jump between some episodes only captured in the intro as if some episodes were cut out.
The protagonist has all the emotions of a slug but always jumping to do the wrong thing so as to provoke more misfortunes or suffering which I guess is the point. Never seems to learn a thing.
Keeps switching between irritating and boring and finally one doesn't like any character.
L'amica geniale (2018)
Deteriorating series
The only thing that has remained great in this series is the cinematography.
The series puts together a shallow stereotype of everybody - revolutionaries, fascists, intellectuals, proletariats, men, women, ... as if the author(s) has an insight into any of them only by reading wikipedia. It creates a populist appeal by serving up a group to confirm a prejudice for everybody.
This is the main problem with this series - the books are shallow but hyped up trash. Only the period of Elena and Lenu being young kids is credible which might be the only real world insight author has. The academic life what the non-academics think it is. The fascists act like the mafia. Etc.
The main character Elena as an adult sleepwalks through the later series in a passive aggressive fashion showing none of the emotional or literary intelligence that the narrator leads us to believe she posesses. The rest of the characters are all similarly bipolar alternating between being passive and being explosive.
From a country that has a rich tradition of story telling, especially in the noir genre, this is as interesting or nuanced as Americanized pizza.
Suspicion (2022)
Starts off well but drives off of a cliff
The beginning sets up the story well (perhaps closely following the Israeli original) for the first 3-4 episodes and then it turns into a campy, inane and mindless plot with characters that keep saying and doing stupid things (probably where they diverged from the original). No more intelligent than the sorority sisters or frat boys movies where each take their turn doing or saying stupid things just to create drama.
This is more Peacock network level series than Apple TV. I guess as long as Apple gets its product placement opportunities they have stopped setting high standards.
Waste of some good talent.
The Split (2018)
8 for season 1, heading down to 4
Started as a tolerable show mainly because of the strong cast and good setup and premise even though the script was spotty. Unglamorized look at life and careers with divorce as the center piece. One did wonder why anyone would hire such a bunch of lawyers always in an emotional mess.
But in subsequent seasons, the show has degenerated into a set of idiotic and unpleasant characters none of whom you would associate with let alone invite into the living room. The entire show is now people sabotaging each other and themselves normalizing dysfunction.
Writing a script with dysfunctional characters is the laziest approach to creating drama well practiced in US writing and screen. The fact that this is infecting BBC does not bode well for the future. Like the trash shows of Jerry Springer or Geraldo Rivera, it attracts only the kind of audience that wants to see road kills and auto accidents for entertainment.
This type of destructive hyper-reality is supposed to be a counterpoint to feel-good fairy tales but like the latter normalizes the other extreme.
What a waste of talent.
Servant (2019)
By season 3, the only tolerable character is Jericho the baby
It must be a social experiment to see how bad the series can get before people stop watching.
It was an interesting premise to start with and a decent script. It would appear the M. K S branding was purchased only for Season 1 and then franchised for subsequent seasons.
This isn't even CW level by Season 3. Each episode is just writers flipping coins on who will be annoying and who will be nuts for the episode.
Random "supernatural" events and characters introduced that go nowhere, over the top characters that all seem deranged other than the mostly comatose "servant".
If this is the standard Apple media group is slipping to, there is going to be brand damage.
The Righteous Gemstones (2019)
9* for Season 1, 2* for Season 2
What started out as a wickedly funny, intelligent satire on the Business of Evangelicals turns into a silly, annoying and superficial SNL spoof of itself in the second season. Writers probably quit before Season two was written.
The characters get more and more annoying, the plots more and more over the top, and the humor more and more slapstick.
May be the pandemic had something with it or they were told not to look too much like real life TV evangelists. Whatever the reason, the smart writing ended in Season one. Viewing should end there too.
If there is a third season planned, they need to rethink it seriously.
Syowindo: Yeowangui Jib (2021)
Not a bad show, except for the concluding episodes
One expects such a long series to be an Asian soap/telenovela stretching a thin story unbearably. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the script filled it with enough material to keep the interest with twists and turns and not too much time filler material... except towards the end.
The series is well made with most of the important characters well portrayed by the cast, supporting cast ... not so much. Beautifully filmed and edited. The product placement gets a bit too much.
The script isn't the most credible at times but doesn't get too soapy.
While it maintained the mystery very well despite flash forward teasers, the reveal episodes were extremely disappointing. With the main mystery solved many episodes before the last episode, the series runs out of steam and credibility and resorts to a lot of silly filler material to stretch it to the contractual length. One feels one's time wasted watching the last two episodes.
A re-edit to 12 or 14 episodes might improve it for reruns.
The Shrink Next Door (2021)
A premise that overstays and a story that is cringeworthy every minute
This is a gentrified psychological version of sadistic warden-inmate shows where the torture is the whole point of the show. It is just watching how the torture escalates.
The premise grows old quickly and starts to feel like nails on a chalkboard with the manipulator and the naive character that is really painful to watch with no redeeming qualities in the story.
The other characters around them seem equally helpless which is unrealistic and designed just to keep the premise going.
While the actors may be popular and the performances are good that isn't a reason by itself to recommend this excercise in psychological torture of the audience!
Harlem (2021)
Dumpster fire within a train wreck of a show
A show that uses self-destructive and irresponsible characters just to create a drama is a dumpster fire even without any gender, race or sexual orientation issues involved. When you shove in the latter to somehow justify the former and try to make the characters sympathetic, it becomes a train wreck while carrying dumpster fires.
It is like the anti-woke and anti-CRT people came together to create a parody of the other side with their own interpretation of what the other side is. Twitter conversations makes more sense than this writing.
The characters stone drunk in the finale didn't say or do anything dumber or different from when they were sober. That should tell you how bad this is. Congratulations to the writers and director for pulling that off.
The only stars are for sympathy to actors who did a decent job given what they were asked to do. Whoopi Goldberg should be ashamed for being involved with this crap.
Bang Bang Baby (2022)
Under-rated quirky noir
Certainly not for the "sanitized Inspector Montelbano" or "gritty Gomorrah" fans.
More in the vein of Killing Eve or Get Shorty or Fargo, noir in the Italian tradition where law and family allegiances are often in conflict but with an irreverent touch of comedy and characters. Well written, filmed and acted. A motley set of characters while a bit stereotyped, nevertheless, manage to pull it off with a straight face. While the subject matter is for mature audiences, it is fairly well sanitized without gratuitous gore.
Like a good series, it isn't about a single logical ending with a long way to get there. One never knows where it is going to go next with its twists and turns. It isn't a simple good vs bad story.
The lead character being a young teenager brilliantly portrayed is a refreshing take on the crime-comedy genre.
Watch it without any pre-conceived notion of genre or characters or period to enjoy it.
We Are Who We Are (2020)
Dysfunction is the new normal... paints alternate relationships in a bad light
When you have a Director and writers that probably think anything that is normal is banal and done before, this is what you get. Everyone is cast into a role and asked to behave in a way nobody would expect them to behave. The military base setting has no more relation to reality than Catch-22, just a prop for the torturous story line.
Shock theater? Hardly. Just a Fellinesque romp of characters - misfits and miscasts - where being contrary to role is the only point. It will only appeal to people who need escapist fodder from the norm, or see validation for destructively thinking outside the norm, like watching taboo porn.
Unfortunately, by clumping alternate and dysfunction together it has negative impact on social progress in gender identity and alternate lifestyles as if they must necessarily involve dysfunction. There is no positive message or impact to compensate in this serious waste of money and talent.
Another series with ratings hijacked with generic positive reviews that show zero evidence of actually having watched it or getting anything from it.
Tehran (2020)
Interesting spy vs spy show without falling into too many MidEast cliches
More Smiley's People than Fauda. Like Fauda, sets itself apart by not falling into black and white narratives in the middle east. Reality credentials are established by not portraying Mossad as some efficient and deadly unit but like any intelligence unit prone to successes and failures and problems.
Unfortunately, the scripting and character development of the millenials in this series including the lead roles are really bad. The lead character never seems to be sure whether her role is like The Little Drummer Girl, Killing Eve or Emily in Paris leading to a serious lack of credibility for her actions.
The problem is a common one of the current script writers and directors in the TV-verse anywhere in world really finding it hard to create well-defined millenial characters switching them between idealists and irresponsible idiots faster than you can say hashtag.
The series is only saved by the Iranian Intelligence Officer character who could have stepped straight out of a le Carre novel.
Unbalanced like a wine bottle with potential that was opened way too early... hopefully it will have bottle-aged better in the following seasons.
White Wall (2020)
Longest drama based on the thinnest idea
Bergman doing a Swedish lite version of Dark.
Good production and settings but most of the whole season is just meandering aimlessly without building any suspense, understanding or interest.
Yes, expressionless Scandinavians are a cliche but in this case it just highlights the lack of any depth or movement in the story which is as bland as any character's expression or the White Wall.
Feels like the whole thing should have been just the first episode to set up a more interesting development or plot line.
One might even snooze through the season finale without noticing.
Departure (2019)
Network TV formula very dated in the streaming age
After having been away from Network TV type formulaic content for many years, I was reminded how bad they really were. There is no going back.
15-30 second snippets so it can be cut and fit into reduced time with commercials in any broadcast airing, idiotic musical score with crescendos to every "commercial break" and to hide long filler material, low budget production that is primarily people walking around and standing amd talking, 20 min content stretched to hour long episodes with flashbacks, over-dramatic pauses and people flying off the handle, generous sprinkling of not very credible or forced "obstructions" to derail people from doing their jobs or to keep them tightly wound, the usual suspects acting suspiciously to misdirect, etc, etc.
Even the story scripting is amateur level (for example, no security posted for the main witness).
This has the feel of a middle-of-the-road 80s or 90s tv series which might have been watchable before streaming shows without the commercial break and budget constraints came on the scene.
Unwatchable even without commercial interruptions if you have become used to streaming shows or British TV drama formats.
The Boys (2019)
Great Season 1; Disintegrating Season 2
Unfortunate that the rating system does not allow separate ratings for seasons. Like so many tv series, this increasingly overstays its welcome. So my rating is an average of the two.
Season 1 was great with a cute switcheroo of villans and heroes into anti-heroes and anti-villains. Production is great. Very worth watching. Series didn't take itself too seriously.
But once the starting premise got old, the second season gets into SNL level of parody aping everything from Xena warrior princess to The Politician. But worse, what started as a tongue-in-cheek twist starts to take itself too seriously and so becomes a parody of a parody with gratuitous violence and gore that serves no useful purpose. You can only see the head explode CGI so many times before it becomes a yawn.
Unless there is a Season 3 with some introspection to get back to the Season 1 level of interesting story lines, this will only appeal to the mindless violence and gore genre watchers of which there are plenty.
Helstrom (2020)
A botched implementation
There is plenty of story here to have been a good show. But the scripting is very poorly paced and mixed, the acting borders on school play level amateurism with people visibly just waiting to recite their lines in turn, poor directing.
Production and effects are good but this confused mess of a script, that makes you feel like it is going in circles just to make a long series, detracts from enjoying anything in this series.