Pax Massilia

Superb show, gripping from start to finish. The pace never lets up from the first scenes. Fine acting from all involved. Suitably menacing villains, compromised cops, and the looming threat of bureaucracy/ internal affairs. 6 episodes - perfect, none of this never ending series nonsense. The fact that is a genre piece means we all know the basic plotlines and so no need for overly boring character exposition. Plenty of space for the viewer to fill in the gaps and round out the characters for ourselves. If only the yanks and the brits could make something half as decent without all the usual fanfare.

I am a big fan of Olivier Marchal. Over the years, I have thoroughly enjoyed his many movies and TV series - they rank among the best in a genre in which the French excell: crime drama. Unfortunately, Blood Coast does not live up to expectations. The plot is unimaginative, a rehash of a story told so many times before. The actors are for the most part wooden and underwhelming. The characters are universally unlikeable and make the dumbest decisions. Swearing, while expected and welcome in such a show, is just overboard and detrimental to storytelling - every conversation turns into in-your-face, profanity-laced slang mumbo jumbo. The "music" is particularly grating - very little sucks as much as French rap. And the ending feels like a slowly deflating balloon. Total miss.

One more thing. Throughout, I kept thinking that these idiots are so fortunate to live in the south of France, a real paradise, and yet they choose to live like gangstas in run down ghettos. Fools.

It didn't met my expectations. I thought the high vote of actually 7/10 on IMDb would be worth a watch. The first episodes looked promisingly but the next went slowly downhill until I stopped it. I mean the story is not full of.turns and plots and was just turning in the circle without any meaningful actions.

The best drug series so far are the Italian ones: Suburraeterna and Gomorrah. You will note quickly the difference.

Finally it became boring and a sleeper. Then there were some wholes that was not logic and that I cannot spoil here further.

For all these reasons i vote 5/10.

It is too overrated here.

France seems to have worse problems than many other countries with law breaking and the impenetrability of the "Cités" to law enforcement. It's bad everywhere in Europe, of course, but Marseilles seems to have it worst even in France. The city has a reputation for corruption so we can't be surprised that the series shows graft both at the highest levels and lower down in the narc squad we are following here.

The action is fast and furious, bodies pile up and a tripartite war between two rival gangs and the cops plays out. We're getting what's probably a year's worth of killing and mayhem compressed into six episodes but the series doesn't suffer from that as there's always something going on in the action.

I enjoyed this and hope there will be a season two.

I don't usually watch crime/gangster television shows that are told primarily from the point of view of law enforcement. The reason is there is the usual Hollywood cliches involved in the writing. Blood coast didn't fail to do exactly that.

That problem aside, the series got off to a good start by building up what should have been a epic showdown between the villians in the series. There was a huge build up of events that left you anticipating the climax, then the writers went in other directions. This leaves me to believe they might be setting it up for another season but it derailed what they had already done. Worth watching but not on repeat.