Comrade Detective

Yes I am from Romania, so maybe I am a little biased. But this show made me remember some times which were hard for us but for me as a kid, were some of the happiest in my life. If you like history, or have lived and "enjoyed" communism in your life,or you are from Romania and can appreciate a smart TV show, then this is something that will make you an instant fan. Having said that, this is maybe too niche in a word dominated by superpower shows , horrible murders TV episodes or MTV Ridiculousness like shows. The so called "found footage of lost TV shows" mixed with the propaganda tag that the so-called founders are putting on it is for once exactly what the show is . This is a propaganda TV series about 2 cops trying to find the killer of their detective friend and fighting with the West Communism ideology in a 1980's Bucharest Romania ( still under the strong arm of the communist party ). It recreates a 80's propaganda atmosphere with minute attention to details that only a few might fully appreciate like for example the televised chess matches, the Nadia Comaneci craze , the old Dacia cars, the clothes that the actors are wearing, the police methods , the guns , the over-repetition of communism ideals and tropes, the demonizing of the west. While I agree that the show "looks too good " for the so-called propaganda style, I quickly forgot about it while watching. Don't expect over the top villains or action ( although it does have a lot of it ). It's like watching the first Expendables. All the 80s glory with all the new that the present has to offer. But from the other side of Iron Curtain. The show is what Miami Vice would have been if made in Romania before the fall of communism. I would give it a 10/10 just for the aftertaste and for making me smile so wide but I am giving it a 9 just to try and curb my enthusiasm. I am pretty sure it's not going to be the next GOT, but I am pretty sure it will develop a small but devoted cult following. I love the actors and they are doing a very good job. Special kudos for the big names in Hollywood which were involved for the dubbing. It was the biggest surprise I had this year.

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.

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!

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!

I was a little skeptic about the idea of dubbing the original actors, which by the way, they speak my native language, but turned out that they added a cool flavor by going this way and really hardened the idea of propaganda. Although, I ultimately see it as a comedy, this shows is an example of how television affects politics; communism propaganda with all its portraying in the show makes it clear. Nevertheless the same propaganda happened in capitalist US as well, for example there "Russian bad guy" in movies, and still happens today all over countries, but is more sublime, its mechanism has evolved.

Overall is a good show to watch, ingenious and unique; give it a try, you will have a nice blend mashup when "digested".