Thicker Than Water

This series has all the usual hallmarks of French productions! There is a lot of shouting at one another, histrionic "over the top" behavior, dialog which is supposed to pass for witty banter, but clearly in a context that only the French would understand. It's neither funny, engaging or even interesting. Why silly series like this ever reach the stage of production and ultimately, streaming is just incomprehensible. The story is supposedly to show the bonds of family, but ends just being your typical French Farce, warmed over and served up over and over. The fact that none of the stereotyped characters are even remotely likable, does not help to make a strong case for this rubbish!

I loves this show, it has very very realistic franco algerian characters.

The humour is good and unfortunately the subtitles seems to give it a massive massive disservice The main character just reminds me of Bojack in the fact she's very flawed and others notice and point that out is what makes her a good character.

The message of the show is one that i can see why many don't understand it all that well for an english audience it doesn't make sense but if you're a POC from a deprived area you will defo relate to the show.

It has action and drama and the other reviewers seem to have completely missed the point.

It's hard to identify with people who commit crimes to cover up running over a police officer with a van. That's not like stealing a bar of chocolate. It's a terrible crime which needs to have consequences. People who try to cover that up aren't nice people. The series presents it as a cultural thing (we are family, so we protect each other). If that's real, it's a terrible culture.

That and continuing arguments between the sisters which are supposed to be funny but spoil the character of the production as a serious crime series and turn it into cheap comedy.

Finally I won't mention the fact that this series portrays north Africans as criminals and Front national will be happy with it. That's a reason to think the opposite.

Personally, it was somewhat entertaining. But, the arguments between families was too much, I think the script and scenes could of had a huge contrast of mellow scenes and scenery. Though, from the list of movies and series that I have seen with family feud or arguments is prolonged towards the end of the film to have a balance of the underlying human aggression and passive aggressiveness in various of scenes. One of the characters was portrayed as being too harsh to her siblings, though in real life, some people are thick skinned to deal with difficult family members. However, the gangster theme was little predictable, I guess I was expecting a lot more enchantment of mellow scenes with the balance of harshness of the world. Some parts of series was mad entertaining though.

I said in a review a couple of years ago of a series that was set in Algeria that there's a famous meme about Maghrebi women. It's a picture of four Arab or Berber biddies on a balcony looking in a different direction each with a statement that they are better than cameras. It's a notion that's been transplanted to the ghettos of Paris and the North African diaspora there - no one can do a thing in the "Cité" without everyone knowing about it.

There's another cultural reference here too that's true to life. Family trumps all, hence the English title. I live in Morocco and can attest to the truth of both of these concepts.

Putting family above all starts the chain of events that leads ever deeper into grim criminality, danger and despair. Twists in the plot lead to more and more extreme situations. None of it's believable, of course, but that's part of the charm of the series.

Just a mention of the "arguments" that others have criticised. Shouting and screeching is a normal means of communication between women of this culture. It doesn't even mean anyone is angry.

I loved this and despite having things to do, I binge watched till the end.