Onder Vuur

I don't know where to start... this is the most amateuristic fire brigade there has ever been. They don't know what way to drive to the building on fire, they find there is a colleague missing only after they are sitting in the fire engine, there is no coordination between police, ambulance and the fire brigade, the police are blocking the street entrance with their car, they continue to use water after they found out they are in a drughouse (like they don't know mixing chemicals with water can cause major explosions), one fireman chases a victim - leaving his colleagues behind, their commanding officer has to ask for an update every 10 seconds, they have to ask their colleague to spray water all the time, they are at a loss to do with a victim, they panic...

I really don't know why people are okay with portraying this service in a way that makes them look like clowns. Fire men and women are highly skilled professionals, working in an environment that depends on good communication, anticipation and confidence in acting. People are extremely well trained. You hardly ever hear about mistakes made by these experts.

So for me, after watching how they handled the first fire, it was exit with this program. What a joke. If I was working in this area, I would consider suing this show for defamation.

I have really enjoyed this series. Most series are so formulaic now that it's hard to find interesting dramas. The characters seemed fleshed out from the very first show and it felt as if you knew them from the beginning. I'm not a fan of profanity and it was definitely overused in this series and the sex scenes were unnecessary but apparently it's impossible to make tv without them these days. How they ever managed making incredible movies and tv before sex and profanity were required I'll never know, but they did. 89 characters left so I'll finish by saying this series should have a li g life with many interesting sub-plots.

No idea why the other reviews are so negative, because I liked it. The acting was generally good, the characters have interesting storylines going for them, though in my opinion they did put in a bit too much at once at times.

I was invested enough in the storyline, acting and characters to blaze right through it. I will say that the characters do go too far in forgiving some of each other's wrongdoings, like being part of the crew means all your sins will be forgiven, no matter how grave.

I was hugely disappointed seeing this . . . I had no connection to any of the characters in it, and couldn't have cared less what happened to them. Many of the characters were awful stereotypes with no depth at all. The script was rather boring, the sub-plots were ridiculous and very cliché-like. The camera movements and direction were really often irritating (especially the moving camera gives you a headache after a while).

One or two of the actors tried their best and were good but that isn't enough when the material is so awfull.

Furthermore, I don't know how they did it but the colours made this series look like it all happened in the 1950's!

Also the city of Oostende looks like a very grim and depressing place especially from the many scenes in the rain and half-light, so it seems a rather miserable place to live.

Now in fact Oostende is a very lively and beautiful town and it doesn't deserve this very ungroomy representation.

I decided to stop watching the series after seeing two episodes because I coudn't stand it anymore and frankly couldn't care less about what happened next.

I have watched many series and OK this isn't the worest series I have ever seen, but it has a boring storyline, boring and cliché subplots and a total lack of character development. In short this is a totally overrated series !

Many reviewers around here are unnecessarily harsh and critical for "Onder Vuur", and I wonder why. Where's your sense of patriotism, people? For a Flemish made action/thriller series about firefighters - and thus requiring a lot of special effects and stunt work - this really isn't bad at all. Quite the contrary, I daresay it's one of the better Flemish series of the past 20-30 years, and it also gets increasingly better with every episode and every season. Admittedly the first few episodes were quite hectic and unengaging, but "Onder Vuur" rapidly became a professional and addictive series. The second half of season one was already solid, but season two was better than season one, and season three is the best of everything.

An often-read complaint is that "Onder Vuur" is a too obliviously attempting to imitate the successful American fire brigade series. Well, duh... unless it's about struggling farmer families in the early 1900s, EVERY Flemish movie or TV-series is a knockoff of an American success formula! There's nothing wrong with that. Sure, it feels like a localized version of "Chicago Fire" or "Rescue Me". Personally, I'd say "Rescue Me" because the private issues of the firemen and firewomen are quite bonkers and far-fetched sometimes.

"Onder Vuur" takes place at the Flemish coast, in the city of Ostend, and centers on the fire-fighting squad East Bank. Straight from the first season, there's speculation of a merging with the city's other and much larger squad, because of understaffing and a operating zone that is too small. The team fanatically resists against a merging, but it eventually happens in season 3. The series features a good mix between intrigues and personal conflicts between the fire-fighters mutually, and spectacular emergency situations/heroic interventions. The latter category is often exceptionally well-handled and includes - among many other situations - a fire inside a green-energy windmill 200m above the ground, a bloody accident with a dune buggy, a fallen construction crane, an engine fire on board of a fisherman ship, and the evacuation of a collapsed factory where an illegal rave took place.

There's solid acting from many of (West) Flanders' finest actors and actresses. Pivotal character is Orlando Foncke, played by Louis Talpe. You can compare his character with Denis Leary in "Rescue Me". He's brave, devoted, and multi-skilled, but also too impulsive and struggling with quite a lot of personal issues. The list of supportive players is impressive - if you live in Flanders, at least - with names like Sam Louwyck, Dirk van Dijck, Joke Devynck, Wim Willaert, Aimé Claeys, etc. Judging by the final episode of the third season, I'm guessing there won't be a fourth season. That actually makes "Onder Vuur" unique from a different angle... It's a series that knows when to quit when ahead.