The Madness

After watching 4 episodes, the first thought I had was- that could easily have been done in 2! And therein likes the problem. It's not the acting, the actors or the plot. It's just that somebody decided to drag this across 8 episodes.

This means that the plot is needlessly stretched, the story meanders and sometimes you feel like just fast forwarding 10 mins so that they get to the point.

As far the people rating this 3 stars, it's really not that bad. Netflix really needs to start undertaking understanding that people won't get dragged by shows that are stretched just to keep one on the platform. And that's all this is- an effort to keep you on 8 hours!

I'm sure glad I ignored the bad reviews and watched this show anyway. I found it very entertaining, relevant, and interesting. A few well placed twists and hearty laughs, too. I simply did not see the issues anyone mentioned in the negative reviews. The pacing, acting, etc are all fine, good even. I liked the balance between the interpersonal dynamics and the big mystery. It takes its time but the slow moments were worth doing. Sure there are things that are unrealistic at times but not any more than is typical for this genre. It's not perfect but it was a good watch and it never pretends to be something it isn't.

It certainly leans into the politics of a political thriller but I found that made it more compelling, not less. If you like this sort of thing, give it a chance.

When I started watching this, I was quite impressed. The first episode was really intriguing and exciting. I love crime-dramas, so I was looking forward to binging this series.

The acting is excellent, throughout and hats off to the cast for making this at all watchable. They do brilliantly with a very poor script. I just found the dialogue really cringy and some of the decisions made by the main characters were just not believable. The storyline overall is interesting but a bit of a mess to be honest. I think it has some good elements in it, reflecting the issues there are with racism, right-wing groups etc but I felt that it was trying to sit on the fence about where the blame lies.

That said, I felt empathy for the family throughout and that is all down to the acting. I hope to see the cast in something more worthy of them in the future.

Coleman Domingo is becoming my favorite actor. He really can make reading the phone book a compelling story. And that's just about as compelling as The Madness right now. The dialogue is almost embarrassingly bad. They try very hard to be punchy and snappy but it comes across as very predictable and corny.

From the beginning, there's much about the story that just defies the most basic commonsense. I constantly find myself asking 'why why why?!' So much so that after episode 2, I skipped episode 7 just to see what happens at the end. I have little doubt that there's little more than lots of overwrought storytelling and superfluous dialogue in the episodes I skipped.

6 Episodes in but still so much of it is cringeworthy, the script is its own worst enemy. Unfortunately the writers have made the characters all seem like total morons where they make decisions that are simply not realistic, From the main characters who make decisions that no sane person would ever do to the police and FBI who all do things that would just never happen in real life as they would all get the sack to all the supporting roles, it really hurts the overall story. It is like watching one of those horror movies where the characters all decide to split up as they don't want to work together even though there is an axe wielding maniac somewhere. I like the premise of the story and the acting while not great is ok but the script is just awful. I am really struggling to finish this.