Marseille

Just finished (binge)watching Marseille. It's an old fashioned but well made series with a simple straight forward storyline without any sidelines. There are some sex scenes but nothing explicit and they all serve the story (read one review that stated the series was oozing sex but that is nonsense). It's mostly about betrayal and changing loyalties in a small group of people centred around a mayor election in Marseille. The plot is very predictable and does not have surprises, you can see developments coming long before they happen. For a 8 part series the cast is very limited but good, acting is OK but in several parts I was not impressed. It's a Netflix series that will not win any prizes, they made better. Marseille is an interesting town, full of contradictions and a boiling pot full of crime and problems on one hand and promise onthe other side. Have the feeling there was more to be made out of this.

This was supposed to be a French version of something like House of Cards. It is about the rivalry between two candidates for the political leadership in Marseille. Both Gérard Depardieu and Benoit Magimel are two good, and very different, actors for the main characters. This creates an interesting dynamic between the two.

Still, the drama feels quite flat and stereotype in its execution. Actors are overplaying at the expense of nuances, subtleties and leaving basically nothing left to the imagination of the viewer. The storyline feels very linear and predictable, there are too few twists that keeps the interest up. Also it seems like very boring politically correct approach where the good folks always are on the left side and the bad ones always on the right side of politics.

The series could have been so much more than it was. A pity with so strong casting.

No surprise that it was cancelled after two seasons.

Though I'm not french I've been living in France for almost 10 years and I speak french. I think I can understand why french people is hating this series. I presume they're looking into details that non- french speakers won't take notice: accents, way of acting, rhythm, dialogues, etc. The french viewers and filmmakers are used to other kind of stories and language (in addition, french people love to take down their own work! You won't never hear them saying "this is good", they will say "it's not bad/c'est pas mal")

The series is worth the watch. There's an evolution in the characters that might have been done better, but acting and script it's not as bad as critics have said. Not the best series I'll see this year, but I've loved it as it radically changed from most of the other options you have on Netflix: American or British productions.

I hope there'll be a 2nd season.

The script is born to mimic other political scripts. And be fateful to the nanny state state school indoctrination. Nothing original. Or creative. Stock characters in a stock story. The acting is so and so. The dialogue is crap. So it's hard to blame the actors. And the writers and producers are so in need of information! It is the French white middle class view on both the very low and the very high placed people in their society. A fairy tale about life in the ghetto or the political games. Probably a series about catholic syndicate men (not women), say the railway or the teachers, extorting more money from the rest of the society would have turned out far more engaging.

Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

Great show. Triste pour la France. If the writers/producers or the people in charge of the translation are reading, please contact me. I would very much enjoy giving your translators French lessons. This show is urban. This show is social. It is also very political. Proper translation is in order to convey the message and honor the writers. Too often do we see TV shows suffer from poor conduit. It has nothing to do with opinions on any of the subjects displayed in the show itself. Simply to honor both languages. The cultural effect might suffer. the slangs, idioms, and social language is quite simple to fix. Language carry the weight of social and cultural change.