Reviews

This show should be an example for all young aspiring TV executive, you can seriously feel the life sucked out of it by network decisions.

So we get an old fashion espionage story, where the babysitter/student/environmentalist gets approached by a government agency in order to get information on her boss who works for a company that might be dumping industrial waist illegally resulting in the death of children in Africa. Of course the babysitter is reluctant to get involved but ends up being the center of the story.

So as you can see it's nothing new, but it can make a show interesting, characters can work with the gray areas, morals, conflicts... except for the fact that the script is written for morons. Right at the beginning you can see that the whole series aims to be comprehensible by everyone resulting in a story written by a 12 year old. You get believable characters but easily manipulated, over the top reactions, with a predictable end game and overall weak plots.

The cast is below average except for the main character, but again they might have nothing to work with so... The budget is quite good for French Television (more than 1 million € / episode) so there's really no excuse.

For the viewer it's impossible to get invested, the story is too predictable, there's no finesse to the plot to make it interesting and because it's so predictable it feels so slow. You can really imagine what could have been but due to poor decisions by network executives, we're stuck with something not worth watching.

I must say I was not convinced at first when I read the pitch, not sure what to expect really and I will admit after seeing the pilot, I wasn't sure of what I'd seen. But there it was a great spoof, as simple as that.

Forget you typical buffoon / idiot that you feel sorry for, none of that here. Using the plot device that the "hero" is in fact the villain, you get embarked on a dark comedy where everything he says or does can be "excused" and accepted as the wrong doing of a criminal sociopath. To emphasis the comic effect, his partner is quite the opposite, but never limited to simply be "the" counterpart. This gives us great jokes and we avoid the usual idiotic stuff that is now common in the genre. For that full credit to the writer, Alan Spencer, the jokes are well constructed and don't feel imposed or forced on us.

The cast is great and really committed, with the exception of Neil Napier's character in the pilot. Don't know if it was the actor or the director's fault but he was all over the place.

Why not 10 out of 10 ? First, there's the German accent, if you do it for comic purposes, go easy on it. The same could be said for the French accent, but since that character is playing a double role it can be interpreted as device to dissociate her two persona. The other problem was the over usage of a plan where the camera is not horizontal, don't know if it was for style purposes but the faded colors and the dark comic aesthetic were enough in my opinion.

This story is so interesting that you won't even mind they're talking about NASCAR (personaly I don't have any interest in that sport). As long as you like motor sports you can't help but admire what the Petty Family has accomplished.

This documentary takes you for long ride, starting at the dawn of stock car racing till now with each generations of the petty family being a part of it. Along with the story there's always anecdotes and fun trivia to keep it fresh and down to earth. The family and friends, who were involved share their experience and what they were going through. The overall feeling you get is dedication and passion, even if Richard Petty was blessed with an incredible talent, you still can imagine yourself in his shoes and feel somehow the emotions.

The crew and narrator did a good job, there's pace and you feel connected. The only default is sometime the time-line and the people involved is unclear but it's really a small detail. There's also historic footage which has been restored and many background details which will help neophytes.

I like it, I hope you give it a try even if you're not a NASCAR fan.

This documentary is about a company named "Sirius Satellite Radio" and some of there share holders, where it should have been about short selling, naked short selling and failures to deliver and use the company as a prime example. Those kind of stock trades are probably the most important subject for the first half of the century (at least in economics), but this documentary miss the target on so many levels.

A (good) documentary should start either with a question or statement, then from that there's a process where it explains where and when it starts, how does it evolves and what are the perspectives... Along the way you need to illustrate with examples, interviews, compare situations, describe the main players involved, ...

This documentary starts with interviews which makes you wonder for 30 minutes what's the point. After sometimes you'll even think you're watching an ad for Sirius Satellite Radio's stock. Hopefully it gets better, you're finally explained what the subject is, the "how" and the "who". Sadly it doesn't last and you're stuck again with interviews after interviews. Sometimes it's so confusing with the "who's who" that they have to put under the name of the person speaking what is opinion is... It sums up how bad it is.

In the end, you get the point but you haven't learned anything specific, it barely scratch the top layer of the problem.

The only thing I can compare this movie to, is one of those TV shows from the 90's, with slightly better actors I must admit. You probably know one, there's this boy who's not sure about commitment and this girl who wants to start a family, throw a couple of inside jokes and stay on a conventional path. The actors manage to do a average job with what they've got (which is nothing almost) and you get one or two jokes that actually are funny, but it's not enough. Some say it's realistic, I think it's conventional, it's too smooth and lacks depth.

That's it, you got your movie. After 30 minutes, you kind of wish something's going to happen but no. Not worth the time or a dime.