Comrade Detective

Wow, this is a great new show. Bravo to Amazon for taking a risk on this – and it must have been a risk if only from a marketing standpoint considering how the writers have blurred the lines between different genres and tropes. The amazing thing is how well it works. Satire is so hard to pull of convincingly, and yet Comrade Detective pulls this off AND develops a gripping cop- procedural/thriller at the same time. This is nifty, ingenious artistry, and you can tell how the whole crew threw themselves into the project. The directing is sharp and moody, the Romanian actors are incredible, the dubbing cast hilarious... even the score is remarkable – a true orchestral sound with real themes and variations the likes of which you don't hear much anymore, even in big screen films. The writing is a masterful mix of the ham-fisted comedy that marked this era's (1980's) cop dramas and subtle satire that works on multiple levels – it lampoons both Western capitalism and Eastern communism but does so in a way that is never snarky or mean-spirited. All of which is to say that even though it's high-concept, it's got a big heart. The only thing left to do now is wait for Season Two... Please, Amazon, you got behind something unique & fresh, keep giving the people what they want!

Smart and funny comedy and an absurd story keeping you surprisingly engaged!

After the first scenes, some might initially wonder about what's going on in front of their eyes and stop watching rating this movie as "garbage". I advise them to go back and reconsider: this movie is a brilliant parody!

The initial rolling credits are the first hint that we are dealing with a joke: the cast appears to have Romanian names, but after a few seconds, one can realize that all of them are funny animal names, very unlikely to be real.

But the beauty comes from the absurdity of the plot and the purposely exaggerated situations, full of stereotypes like: - Romanians listening only to classical music - cheering and commenting on live TV chess matches - being obsessed with gymnastics and Nadia Comaneci. - having no idea what "Jeans" are - having no idea what the Monopoly game is, only to consider it a symbol of the "putrid capitalism", once they find out - teaching kids to snitch on their subversive parents - the Communist Party Manifesto is a precious gift one would always carry in the pocket, next to the heart, like a Bible for some Americans. - group of workers strolling in the park and singing the national anthem - belief that western music is in fact propaganda designed to break down your defenses - CIA importing drugs to undermine the black community - the US Ambassador is busy spreading "freedom and democracy" while her schedule contains 2 hours massages at 10AM and 4 hours lunches - some very fat Americans guys are stuffing their mouths with piles of hamburgers inside the American embassy. - Americans are so lazy they can be bothered to wash their cars (when the Romanian detective is questioning what is a car wash good for) - everyone in America seems to have AIDS - the West wants to turn all women in prostitutes. - New York City looks like a nightmarish hell on earth - Americans elect actors and celebrities (like Ronald Reagan) as presidents, a proof of their indoctrination. - When in doubt, Romanian ask themselves "what would Lenin do?", as opposite to Americans asking themselves "what would Jesus do?" - The "traitor" cop, with that large tattoo (something unheard of in 80s Romania) who is "praying" to the American flag, is nothing else than a parody for the American White Supremacists. Just replace the American Flag with the one with a Nazi Swastika and... there you go. ....

And more Easter Eggs quoting from memory: - "There is an as...hole building skyscrapers in NY, putting his name in golden letters on them" - "Freedom of religion is not an right, universal health care is" - "For once, I appreciate your American obsession with the second amendment" ....

Or funny references like - reference to Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" and his "invisible hand", the corner stone of the capitalist economy. - reference to Tuco Salamanca from Breaking Bad: instead being offered a meth deal, the Romanian smuggler is offered a Pepsi deal. ....

Really enjoyed it!

It's so close. The biggest issue is that it looks too good. Part of the joke is that Communism is better than Capitalism...but not really. Instead, we get a glossy, overproduced product that couldn't possibly be what it pretends to be. There's far too much of the West in this show to establish the verisimilitude and that is the entire genius behind Garth Merenghi's Darkplace. Darkplace showed a horrible show produced by incompetent people and it kept up that fiction. Comrade Detective only gets half of the joke. Gorgeous cinematography, sweeping camera pans with nary a trace of the grit of the "source material." If you've ever seen any Eastern European from that time period then you know it doesn't look good. Even under the rubric of "restoration" it falls apart pretty quickly.

The other issue is they couldn't decide whether it's a comedy or an homage to bad TV. There's not enough jokes to be rollickingly funny and the plot is too believable to really sustain jokes. The stuff with chess is great but they should have hit it harder. The profanity seems really out of place to pass it off as an actual TV show. Perhaps that wasn't their vision and this was the product they wanted to produce. However, just throwing a few communist phrases out in the middle of police drama doesn't create a world. It just points out that they didn't fully think the project through.

Still, it's a good effort.

No one is being exploited. Every actor that was involved got the double, double, entendre. It is done so straight faced, however, that it only adds to the elements of comedy and drama. This is wonderful, clever, television.

The bare faced communist propaganda presented so matter of factly, viewed now through the lens of history, is gold. The take on the 1980's buddy cop scenario played out hundreds of times in American Films and TV is incongruous to the 'behind the iron curtain' setting but, in being so, works. The material is a cartoon style take on the threats communist Romania may have faced from the West. The dialogue is done in an American style with Eastern European content - again this adds to the unlikely seriousness.

The whole six episodes are a blended mix of the above ingredients. The dubbing into English adds to this the idea of a throw back to another era. The camera direction is superb. The whole thing from start to finish riffs on all of the above elements to provide gloriously knowing entertainment.

The show also manages to add in ideas that will make you think on the whole failed communist experiment but also makes you think on the failures of the capitalist experiment that we are living.

That whole thing nearly, completely, failed too around 2008.

I absolutely loved this show and I hope there's a second season as some point! Tell you what's as funny as the show though! Some of these reviews where people thought it was a real show! Haha. I think my favourite comment from one reviewer was something about it being dubbed was annoying, and why the hell did they put them on when the Romanian actors had done such a good job!? Haha. I think the whole point flew straight over their head! The vast majority of Americans are too lazy to read subtitles, they certainly wouldn't watch an 80s Romanian cop show without it being dubbed. Even in one episode at the beginning Channing & Jon Ronson explain why they went the dubbed route for the supposedly "real show". I'm guessing the reviewer didn't make it to that episode before he'd made his mind up!

It's basically just really silly and over the top with very subtle lines that I personally found hilarious. For me there was a laugh a minute. I loved it from the get go. I'm lucky to have even heard about it really, I'm a huge Jon Ronson fan, of his books, audio books, and films he's credited with so I was just googling what he'd done lately and that's how I came across this, as I'd not heard about it prior, so I'm glad I did that google search as like I said, I really loved the show.

The only let down for me, and which stopped me from giving it a 10, was the ending of the finale, It is an absolutely stupid show with outrageous scenarios but even with that in mind I felt the ending was just a little too much! I won't go into it with spoilers but yeah, I just felt a tad let down with that.

It did say "to be continued" after that last episode anyway so here's to hoping for a 2nd season.