Riese

How would anyone fund such a bad show, is beyond anything. I don't even know where to begin, the show is completely stupid! It makes no sense; but not in a "Lost in the good years" no sense, but in an actual lack of direction. The society portrayed in the show is all around weird, and it works in a way that is not believable at all. I know it's low budget, but even so, you can compensate with acting and plausibility. The show has none. It's a sequence of clichés and dumb choices, and characters that are just not organic. At all! Don't waste any time watching. I certainly didn't, I couldn't bear watching any episode 'till their end, and I've tried, more than once! But I guess the show fits syfy's schedule, filled with other productions that don't take any kind of quality into account.

Couldn't watch this for long. I can forgive a low budget if the writing and acting are good, which is what I was hoping for here, but the narration and dialogue in Riese sound like something I would have written when I was a teenager. The actors seem like actors in cheap costumes, reading lines from cue cards. You can't see the production team, but you can tell that they are right there, just of sight. It is terribly obvious that you are watching grown men and women playing make believe in front of a camera — and without much feeling for it.

But it was the narration that made it unwatchable: execrably redundant exposition, inserted between nearly every scene, pointless telling what we just saw, or are just about to see, like terrible comic book writing. I really lost my cool when an entire scene consisted of Riese walking through a set looking pensive, and the narrator telling us what she was thinking. Oh my. That's not a script.

Princess Riese, sole survivor of a coup d'etat, has to regain the throne that was stolen from her by the current Empress. Meanwhile, there is a religious cult, the Sect, with an agenda of their own, and a small resistance group hoping to find Riese.

A good setup for a story and an enjoyable watch, though very short and unfortunately not bringing much of a conclusion.

Like others mentioned, there is no thought behind why things look steampunk. Why the goggles? Why the masks and why do Sect people wear machinery, what does it do? If this was explained more, the show would get an 8.

As low as the budget was, the show manages to look decent and the backgrounds of the empress's castle look particularly grand in some brief shots. The actors are good and do what they can with the sometimes stereotypical characters.

I would watch a second season to see things unfold. Shows like this would be much better with some more budget, longer runtimes and some good HBO-caliber writers, so they wouldn't have to waste their talents at soft porn garbage like Game Of Thrones.

I actually kind of enjoyed this show. Lucky for all of you who hated it and thought it was 'just plain awful' it doesn't look like they're going to make any more. As I was saying, sure, there are moments where they lay on the suspense a bit heavy and it's probably not as good as other stories but it's still damn beautiful to look at. It's like watching 'Pacific Rim', you know that things don't make sense mechanically but it's a bit of a marvel.I found the story with the babies pretty different so I would've liked to see what happened next. Don't take my word for it, though. I'm pretty easily impressed...And if you do like this series, the indefinite cliff hanger will drive you as nuts as it has me.

There was more narration than there was acting. That is a very bad sign. There was potential, but it was crushed into the dirt before the 1st episode was half way through.

To many scenes of a character just walking in the short gaps between the narrations start and stop.

It is like they thought they were making an audio book and forgot why they had any actors. I can't even say that the acting was bad (or good) because there really wasn't much to go on! What were the people making this THINKING?

P.S. Dear IMDb, please stop being idiotic about how many lines I used, this is plenty long enough to say what needed said.