dascarooo

Rare quality show on ARD with international cast

Without spoiling where this is going: I recommend watching the whole series either in one go or split into two.

Definitely watch the first 3 or 4 episodes back-to-back, since the first episode alone is not a good representation of what the show is like on the whole.

Those of us who live in Germany know better than to expect good writing, direction and cinematography on top of okay acting.

We do have a number of extremely talented actors here, but more often than not, the production around them fails them completely.

Not the case with "Oderbruch".

It starts benignly enough with a flood situation of the river Oder near the German border to Poland, but the flood is, like many things in this wildly ambitious series, merely a metaphore.

I mentioned DARK in the title. This series has nothing to do with DARK in terms of content or plot. It's totally different in every single way except one: like a folded piece of paper, both Oderbruch and DARK unfold bit by bit. And every time a new information is added, the nature of the series is changed forever.

This makes this series not only watcheable, but rewatcheable. Even the first episode, which as I said does not represent what the show is like, gives you more the second time around.

Not only is Oderbruch twisty, different and interesting. It is also ambitious. If a second season gets made, I am sure the story will expand even further in its scope. I am very willing to sacrifice the Fernsehgarten for that, even though the bosses at ARD would disagree with me.

Many historians can better explain why this movie should not be viewed as a history lesson. But bad research (or intentional changes) aside, the movie was long and bad. Movies in the past have been historically ridiculous but also wildly entertaining, or even cinematically masterpieces. Obviously we didn't expect this to be a brilliant movie like "Master and Commander".

Galdiator and Kingdom of Heaven, also directed by Ridley Scott, were and remain fun to watch, despite the complete lack of realism. Or maybe because of it.

"Napoleon" on the other hand, was just ... bad. It was bad in terms of accuracy. It was bad in terms of a biography, because OG Napoleon has been described by his contemporaries as a very different man from what was shown here. It was not a good character study, because Josephine's role was inflated and took away from Napoleon. It was no fun to watch and none of the characters were engaging. To top it all off, the movie also had the sad, desaturated colors of a "based on a true historical event" story. We couldn't even enjoy the colors in the costumes because everything was dark and grey!

In short, this was pathetic and we will not watch it again or even recommend it for one-time viewing.