Fortunate Son

I was reluctant at first to watch this because of the low overall rating. Then I saw that it was low because of an ignorant and childish 1 given by someone with some weird issue.. believe the people who rated it 9+10. The story is clever, that cast superb. You will be hooked! I was gutted when it ended...

Watching mainly for 60s atmosphere and soundtrack, at least the soundtrack is partly there. On the surface of it, the subject/premise seemed fairly original at least, the subject of US draft-dodgers running and hiding in Canada.

Canada avoided involvement in Vietnam-Australia and New Zealand did not.

So Vietnam caused all of the same social ructions here as in America itself. Peace-marches, khaki elections, Agent Orange. College students throwing buckets of red paint or pig's blood on returning veterans. 501 Australian KIA. Thousands more physical and psychological cripples.

I was 8 years too young to be drafted, don't know to this day whether I'd have gone along with it or run as well if I had bene old enough and had been called up.

Oh well, it was a good war soundtrack music wise. The shows song selection bears useful comparison with another recent 60s time-capsule series like AQUARIUS for example.

Yes, the US ,military or spy-spooks blackmailing some guy that had a patrol/firefight go pear-shaped in a friendly-fire FUBAR , to then go to Canada to infiltrate spy on and help sabotage the draft-dodgers and their support network IS a far-fetched one.

One other thing that could have been done without in both a continuity sense and annoying sense, is a teenager that goes "WHATEVER".

I don't think 'WHATEVER ' was invented in 1968. Which was a good thing.

The hippy-parents with a conservative business-oriented child maybe of course is a little (Alex Keaton/Family Ties) derivative.

It's enough to keep me washing past the episode #2 or 3 I'm up to so far..I'm at least going to look up some of the sound-track songs I did not recognize, about half I did recognize. .here in Australia they out it on about 2310 after he late ch9 news so, another advantage is that the ad-breaks are very short.

That's one star apiece for each episode.

I was in high school during 1968 and what's portrayed here is pure nonsense. The plot is simply unbelievable on so many levels. It involves a conspiracy theory that even a hard-core conspiracy nut would say is far-fetched. For reasons I don't understand, CBC is heavily into doing "period" pieces and every one that they do is an absolute mess of anachronisms and basic stupidity. This one is true to form.

Pandering to the false narrative that everyone alive at the time was either jive or stupid. I was there and I experienced some really messed up chit, but the backstory was much more complex than this Popsicle pablum could relate. Is this crap that your parents told you? Did anyone bother doing some real research? Or hire some technical advisers whose salary wouldn't amount to the first episodes catering bill? This is a story long overdue to be told, but when you fumble the plot so badly that it become farcical and unable for today's generation to relate to - you poison the field. All for a buck - can't be for any artistic motives, or you would have done due diligence. I hope you choke on your exploitative paycheck and the lavish luxuries it affords.

CBC should be ashamed to air this show, it an insult to Canada with all of the ignorant mistakes. Ladner had only one brick building (the post office). The border crossing at Blaine is the Peace Arch crossing and was at this time a multilane crossing, not a tiny outpost as depicted. The investigations into the assault of the border guards would have been investigated by RCMP officers. The bank that the sister works at did not exist. there was no such bank as the British Columbia Treasury Bank. There ware no peace marches in Ladner. If you want film a show set in Canada at least get the facts right. these glaring errors put me off watching the next episodes!