Cráneo febril

Starting off with captivating protagonist and promising story that delivers to some extend but not all. Epidemic, societal decline and government control are main themes. Beautifully shot with grim city scapes. Reasonable realistic character development but it crumbles a little at the 5/6 episode mark where the story takes detours. The biggest fail and why it is not high 8s for this review is the lack of explanation around this epidemic, the mortality and symptoms for example. Without this, it is difficult to feel threat or urgency which also sends other storylines a drift. It feels like the story is searching although the cinematography is excellent.

The series is adopted from a Turkish novel written by Afsin Kum, published in 2016, which I was not aware of it before watching the series. I finished the first season 15 minutes ago, and really enjoyed watching it. It needs a lot of thinking, sense of humor and open minds. I admired the "abuks" and congratulate the writers.

All the characters, acting and directing are incredible. The story takes place in Istanbul. There is an outbreak going on which spreads by hearing nonsense talking of affected people. The main character the hot skull, is the only immune person who is a linguistic scientist, but has a side affect of the immune response.

Hope to see the second season soon.

Having watched the first episode it is fairly obvious that this is a re-imagination of the 2008 Canadian film Pontypool with a COVID like setting/analogy.

That film had the exact same premise, a diseased state with the same symptoms and spread the exact same way, verbally (speech to hearing). Having said that, the production values are good, and the lead actors are good as well. I haven't watched too much Turkish cinema, but this seems to be a quality production even if the idea is not entirely original. Yes, it is Turkish, but the video I watched had a dual English Audio component and subtitles as well. I'm interested to see where they take this and will continue to watch. BTW, check out the original movie, Pontypool, it is quite good.

The story and performances were good, some parts were slowed down and some parts could be elaborated more, but overall it was quite good, cinematically. The ideas were captivating with all the visual compositions. I think it was unique in that way.

The most satisfying part of the series was the criticism on politics and the autocratic system, I really enjoyed it.

Downside was the character development, they were not so deep, especially the main characters could have more depth. My favorite character was Ozgur.

In short, the series are worthy of watching, it is not a simple action series, it gives you more than that.

Well-fictioned scenario making the audience curious and waiting for the next episode. After two years with the pandemic, it forces us empathize and question our own world. Stunning acting from Turkish movie and theater industry.

Moreover, the fact that the book inspired by the script was written 3 years before the script was written is another factor that makes this fiction interesting.

Considering the low budgets that nerflix allocates to European productions, it should not be compared to Hollywood productions.

However, it can be said that 7 different local Turkish animation companies and more than 100 graphic-designers work meticulously and it is a good job worth watching.