The Tvseries story itself seemed a little too shallow, it's nothing extraordinary and it felt heavy on repetition of a somewhat typical cliché. The realisation that it was a Netflix show perhaps gave us a little bit of something to hope for or look forward to; a little bit of extra creativity usually associated with Netflix shows. Boy where we disappointed.
We will start this "solid reasons why you should not watch this" review with the cast. I can conveniently state that Netflix and it's creative team have a knack of finding the right people for the job, and that is inclusive of the cast. On this occasion however we felt that the creative team and the casting unit did a very poor job with this one. Barring the fact that the show is a Danish one, we felt that with the successful casting for non-English tvshows like Dark and Sacred Games just to mention the most recent of them, we quite expected another brilliant cast. Who we had however were basically flat, they were unfitted or rather not suited to the part they were to play. Their conversations were torrid and marred with a host of emotionless dialogues and amateurish situational character responses. Alba August, Lucas Lynngard Tonnesen being the lead characters felt burdened by the part they were to play. Where the script demanded emotional responses from both, they seemed to put too much into it and ended up coming "off". Need I mention that it felt as though they were " loud" when they disagreed?
The cast came up as amateurs and their acting borderline amateurish!
The storytelling itself was amateurish, it was poor, it felt disjointed and didn't captivate. This is very very un-Netflix. How do you tell a story of Disaster? Epidemic or extinction level events? By making it gory, sad, horrific and unpredictable. In all aspects we felt the show failed. The show was Predictable, it was not terrific, it was not gory and my goodness it was inconsistent. We really didn't like that Netflix chose to play it safe. Even the rainfall was Predictable.; it appeared to only rain at night, whereas the very first time it rained, it rained in the afternoon. That felt too Predictable and 'safe'. Perhaps, the writers realised it couldn't have swept it under the rug, and decided to give audience an afternoon rain, but played it safe once again, making it rain only when the characters had shelter?! Ridiculous!
Not to mention the fact that it suddenly appeared that the rain no longer carried the virus , the only time they came in contact with the rain? And that's an unexplained aspect of the show that really got viewers talking. Playing it safe again!? I'd like to think so.
Further on the inconsistencies front was the bath scene. The characters reacted negatively when asked to take a shower at The Home, pointing out that they were expected to take a shower with water ( contaminated as they assumed all water were), indicating for a fact that they hadn't taken their baths for 6 years for fear of infection from contaminated water yea? Why did they then looked so clean? They came off as people who took their baths daily, as against the presented notion that they had not been taking their baths for a very long time. Ridiculous!
On the conflict scene, it also did feel kind of stupid that Mr Andersen( father) who knew the cause and cure of the virus, would abandon the cure;Rasmus Andersen, and go on a wild goose chase. That gave us the impression that the Epidemic was not as serious as the creators of the show were trying to pass it off as. Epic Fail!
The conclusion of the first season however did seem to get rid of trying to play it safe, by not seeking an easy way out. The infection of Rasmus, who was supposed to be Deux ex Machina threw the plot wide open.
So where we may have been outwardly irritated with the first season, the conclusion of the season may (if created properly) offer up a rivetting sequel. It may not be a good story, and it may not be a top notch telling of an otherwise poor story, but we however feel that with a slight tweak in the narrative and narration technique, we may yet have an okay tv series on our hands.
Conclusively, the first season is poor, it's amateurish, it's ridiculously inconsistent and we advise impatient viewers not to touch this one with even a 100 foot pole. Abysmal!! We feel that with this abysmal and utterly disastrous performance, it may perhaps be time to shelve this Multi-Lingual TVSeries project from the stables of Netflix, not for a want or dearth of ideas but for a lack of creative personal in target countries. Plus an apparent lack of quality personnel to man our screens.
Alba August
Lucas Lynngard Tonnesen
Mikkel Folsgaard
Lukas Lokken
Jessica Dinnage
Created by Jenny Ann Balverde
Directed by Kenneth Kainze and Natasha Arthy
FCA's AppR 6/10
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