Reviews

I was looking forward to this show. A game studio creating an MMORPG, made by the creators of It's always sunny is such a great premise with a lot of potential, but it just doesn't get there.

The best thing about this show are the one-off episodes such as Dark Quiet Death, Quarantine and Backstory (as you can confirm by the top rated episodes), and these are entirely separate from the main story. That alone should tell you something.

Season 1 starts well by exploring several aspects of game development and common issues with the gaming industry in a light-hearted and comedic way. The side characters are very bland but Ian and Poppy carry the show.

Season 2 starts to drop 1 gaming related joke per episode and then tries to slowly lead us on the interpersonal relationships of characters that just aren't worth caring about. Most side characters go into pointless arcs that are neither funny nor likeable.

And then Season 3 devolves into an extremely generic workplace comedy with almost nothing to do with games at all. It's like a whole different show about Ian and Poppy's dynsfuntional relationship, which become increasingly unbearable. Not even the main characters are redeemable at this point.

This could be a great show but it looks like there's too many conflicting ideas and some side plots like the testers couple are totally unnecessary and lead to nothing of interest.

I was really excited to watch this. Made by the same creators as one of the best TV shows ever (Dark), and with an interesting premise and timeline, 1899 had so much potential.

The acting, the visuals, costumes and music are all great. Unfortunately, the story is just a big mystery box that spoils itself early on and doesn't really lead anywhere.

The multi-lingual aspect of the passangers makes total sense and fits well for the atmosphere, but it just doesn't lead to great storytelling or dialogue. Most of the time the passengers are just shouting at eachother in their native tongue, not understanding eachother or talking to themselves, which gets tirestome really fast. Unfortunately, I had a very hard time actually caring for any of the side characters.

They've also introduced way too many crazy elements, which don't really have an explanation other than "it's not real". I caught the whole 'simulation' twist early on, since they showed us screens on a wall, and one of the characters manipulating the world with ease with that console. It's very hard to care for any of the characters once you suspect things are just not real (and when too many freky things start happening, it starts to become ridiculous and fairly obvious).

Ultimately a decent show to binge, but hopelessly drags on for too long before they reveal the interesting twists. Doesn't help that the ending pretty much made the entire S1 completly pointless either.