FBI: International

My name is Ronald, borne and raised in the Netherlands.

I was watching Season 4, episode 2 today and got annoyed, as I could barely understand the "Dutch " people. The people supposed to be Dutch were in fact English language people trying to speak Dutch and it was absolutely horrible...

My advice is to use actors from the country you are portraying... In this case, most children in the Netherlands learn to read and write English in primary school, so it wouldn't have been that difficult to find adequate actors and especially the adults, they all speak English...

Also, the striping on both ambulance and police car, are nowhere near the real striping and the uniforms are what they used perhaps 20 years ago. Please do research especially when doing shows like this an do better...

CSI did this before. A bunch of arrogant Americans making fools of themselves in places where they shouldn't be.

It's a decent enough show to watch if you have nothing else to do and need to fill your time with something to watch.

The first thing you have to overlook is the fact that American writers have zero clue about how the real world works. The writing is exactly how you would expect. Americans running all over Europe ordering people around and running the show wherever they happen to land. It's la-la-land writing and has nothing to do with how things work in the real world.

If you can live with the fact that it's very unrealistic, then you can enjoy a few episodes here and there. It's nothing we haven't seen before and it's filled with every american cop show cliche.

This show is impossible, poorly cast, and impossible. That said, it isn't one star unwatchable. Many of the one star reviews are from reviewers offended by the very concept of Americans operating in their country or by the numerous cultural liberties the show takes for the American target audience.

The biggest challenge with this show is the distracting premise. Without explanation or justification, we're handed a group of four FBI agents operating in Hungary. It makes no sense. The writers clearly never thought this through, so at various times they have armed FBI agents running around arresting suspects, unarmed FBI agents running around arresting armed suspects, and unarmed FBI agents standing around while local law enforcement arrests suspects.

What the show needs is some consistency and justification. Place these FBI guys on a joint Interpol-FBI task force. Have them begin chasing suspects in the US and continue their pursuit overseas after getting the necessary clearances. Have an army of State Department employees in the background burning the phone lines negotiating approvals. Have the FBI team be called in by local law enforcement who need some unique specialized skills or expensive ultra-high tech equipment the team is furnished with. Forget the FBI and make them a clandestine branch of the CIA. Something, anything, that is even remotely plausible.

The other major problem is the casting. The no more than adequate lead has 90% of the lines and 100% of the meaningful dialogue. His second in command, the living embodiment of beige, appears to exist solely to provide the lead with a thoroughly uninteresting love interest. The rest of humans on the team may as well not exist. Eleven episodes in and I couldn't tell you their names. They're given nothing to say, nothing to do, and no character development. It seems the only time they get involved is when the director realizes they've been hanging around the set for days and takes pity on them.

I like the dog. The dog is great.

Five stars for the settings, occasional plot twists, and interesting action scenes. No stars for the stupid premise and thoroughly inept casting. Five stars.

What a crap series.

The whole premise does not hold water as the FBI have no jurisdiction abroad. They also carry guns in countries where it would not be allowed etc.

It is also ridiculously patronising in that it tries to show all other police forces as being inept and that they are the only ones that can solve a crime.