Mar de fondo

For me was a surprise this serie. I really enjoyed the acting ,talented lead actors and credible characters made me finish it in one day. At the beginning I was expecting another Elite or another teenager drama with a lot of alcohol, drugs and sex; and of course a murder and maybe it is, a typical summer young drama; the difference with this one is the good acting, Alexander and Louise are really well played , they showed talent and they proved that we can have quality in this type of serie full of stereotypes and common places .Willem De Schryver shines playing Alex , showing a long range of emotions and feelings.

Being Belgian, I had received several notifications about 'Knokke off' (original title) so I ultimately decided to give it a shot with ep1.

I was thoroughly surprised...good acting, good camera work and a nice story based more or less on real life (it is well known here in Belgium the seaside city of 'Knokke' indeed has many rich posh people).

So yea, I binged the show in 2 evenings....it is well written (thanks to Luc Wyns), good character.development.

I did not like the last episode as everything got a bit too rushed....and apparently a semi-open ending (which I hate) is popular nowadays.

3/10 just for the scenery, the vibe and the directing.

This is the 3rd TV show I watched in a row where it's glorifying cheating on husbands/boyfriends and breaking off marriages or relationships.

Obviously it's just a show, and obviously there are plenty of movies out there where men cheat on wives/girlfriends, and in those movies/shows, men are portrayed as evil or horrible, and at the end of the movie, he ends up in a bad shape. HOWEVER, in these last 3 shows I watched (all filmed in 2023), women cheated on their husbands/boyfriends and were portrayed as romantic, beautiful or "finding herself", and not even show a little empathy towards the husband/boyfriend.

What happened to the morals? Are we just normalizing women cheating and not taking accountability? I'm surprised that no one is outraged by this.

An epic show, i personally enjoyed it, the plot was fascinating. Reminds me a little bit of "Euphoria", this show gave me a different point of view on rich people's lives, of course most of the things that happened there wouldn't be in real life but looking at rich people and thinking that they've got no problems is false. I'm not justifying anything that they did there but it gives another perspective. The plot was interesting as it escalated with time. More than that in most teen shows the teens are the center of the plot and the parents are just side characters almost without a personality but here every parent has their issues that we find out about with the continue of the series. I recommend watching.

This series really is no more than a soap opera. It's full of the typical clichés you would see in any youth series. I won't spoil the storylines, but you can think of the most common themes in any soap opera or youth series and put them together. Anyway, as you can tell.. it wasn't for me and I don't think it's the quality content some claim it to be. There was no originality and most of the times it was very predictable.

But apparently it ticks all the boxes for teenagers/young adults: Hot guys, hot girls, sex, drugs, a girl struggling with her disorder, more sex, an evil father, rich people and a not so rich person... etc. Etc.

So, why did I finish it? There was one mystery that I was curious about, so I wanted to know what happend, so there's that. And the entire series feels like eye-candy, so.. when you've got nothing better to do you keep watching for the hot actors and locations.

Some positives: Beauuutiful locations! And the acting was above average. Especially Alexander and Louise.