Django

Actually, I awarded this series a total of eight stars but I chose to use white ones for the last six as an homage to art.

If world famous paintings like "Black Cat at Midnight in a Coal Bin" tickles your fancy then you'll not want to miss a riveting second of this attempt at art. For me, however, I don't think I should have to sit in a completely dark room and strain my eyes to watch a made for TV series.

Once again the choice to record in visible light (because, well, we can now) was chosen over allowing the audience the opportunity to actually be able to follow the story instead of needing to guess who that shadow actually is and what is he (or she) doing. I threw in the towel after, roughly, fifteen minutes of this and moved on to something else.

I barely watched more than half of the first episode for one very simple reason, that being, I couldn't see what was going on. The grading, brightness and contrast is so dark, even in sequences that are supposed to be under bright sunshine, you can't see what's going on. You can't see faces to tell what expression they have. You can't see buildings or their surroundings. You can't see anything. I'm watching on a 65" OLED and it's just a dark smear across the screen with a vague flickering of candlelight. It could be the greatest series ever filmed, but not being able to see what's actually going on in the scenes spoils any chance of enjoyment. Hard pass from me as a result.

It's hard to take this show seriously, especially when the character Elizabeth speaks...I finally realised - she sounds like Moira from Schitts Creek when she does her weird accent trying to buy a car. It unintentionally turns the show into a comedy. At least a laugh is a welcome break from the tedious plot. A carefully curated slow moving show can be riveting, this is...well, boring. Churning out a lot of yawn worthy and trivial tropes, between more odd accents and attempting to draw out "secrets" that are unsurprising and lazy. More than one accent in the show changes within a sentence, creating a sense of disorientation in terms of where the story is meant to be set or where the hell anyone is from.

Obviously the expectation for celebrities to remain youthful looking is unreasonable and sad. I apologise to the actress, as I don't mean to be picking on her, but again, Noomi Rapace, who plays Elizabeth, has clearly overdone the cheek filler to the point that it is obviously misshapen in the first episode. Getting filler to the point of deformity and a very unnatural shape is sad to see.

The best part about the show is the surprise (to me) appearance of Abigail Thorn, of Philosophy Tube renown. Abigail shines in her role and breaks up the otherwise lacklustre performances.

I am struggling through episode 3 and really finding it hard to continue to see it out.

But it's not.

Assuming you have HDR on your TV and you can see what is happening...

The story is convoluted and the flashbacks not handled very well.

The acting is very variable, even by the recognised names.

While the photography is good, it does not make up for the bad acting. Characters performances vary between wooden to manic.

And the accents. Very poor, especially Ms Rapace, most distracting.

The Django character has appeared in several spaghetti westerns over the last fifty years. This series does follow in the established genre but has sacrificed clarity for pretentiousness.

If they make a remake, remember to turn the lights on.

Not sure reviews focusing on the mishmash of accents really the point as I imagine accents would have been mongrel mix of immigrant ones back then. Not sure personal comments re Noomi Rapace were necessary either. I was unaware of previous versions so had no expectations but after 2 episodes felt this was trying too hard to have gravitas. The acting stilted with lots of pregnant pauses, knowing stares and as ever liberal use of flashbacks with most of the action in darkness presumably to avoid continuity issues and the need to dress sets.

So it passes the time while playing video games, as a bit too tedious to give full attention to. Hardly the searing new drama the ads proclaim.