Marseille

Great show. Triste pour la France. If the writers/producers or the people in charge of the translation are reading, please contact me. I would very much enjoy giving your translators French lessons. This show is urban. This show is social. It is also very political. Proper translation is in order to convey the message and honor the writers. Too often do we see TV shows suffer from poor conduit. It has nothing to do with opinions on any of the subjects displayed in the show itself. Simply to honor both languages. The cultural effect might suffer. the slangs, idioms, and social language is quite simple to fix. Language carry the weight of social and cultural change.

Marseille, well the dialogue or script sound like some cheap french soap opera, the scenery though is fantastic, views of the city are what kept me watching this jumbled up mess of a soap opera. Excessive reliance on sex scenes seem almost clichéd, whose screwing who, got to keep track of all of that useless drivel, scriptwriters should of got on with developing some proper dialogue and in depth characterization. The characters all come across as clichéd and tiresome, dreary dreary, but the panorama shots of the city do look so good. The marvelous french architecture and historic city buildings are interesting backdrops to all of this. It is supposed to be quite the crime infested city, and I guess that is real to a point, but I wish they could have given the characters more dimension, and stop with the excessive useless tiresome overdone sex scenes.

After House of Cards I hoped to enjoy a similar show in European setting this time. Depardieu with all the cast perform very well, but the script in general is rather flat. The behavior of major protagonists is illogical at times as if Netflix was very much in a hurry to release season one in 2016.

It would have been a very decent season if the script writers had studied better the psychological side of main protagonists.

Wrapping up: music is great, photo shooting pleasant to watch, location also fantastic, nonetheless it is far from West Wing or House of Cards milieu.

For a French series, I think it's a good beginning to a new era, it will open others ways to explore for the "french series industry" (yes by Netflix this time).

About the series it-self, it's quiet good, the script, trivia, camera shoots are good. Sometimes the dialogues are "weird" and I think even more when you understand French. About the actors, Magimel is good in this role and Depardieu is quite eaten by his past, we know almost everything about his films and there is no surprise about his playing. But all together have a sort of charm in the Frenchie way.

So I'll wait for the season 2.

Just finished (binge)watching Marseille. It's an old fashioned but well made series with a simple straight forward storyline without any sidelines. There are some sex scenes but nothing explicit and they all serve the story (read one review that stated the series was oozing sex but that is nonsense). It's mostly about betrayal and changing loyalties in a small group of people centred around a mayor election in Marseille. The plot is very predictable and does not have surprises, you can see developments coming long before they happen. For a 8 part series the cast is very limited but good, acting is OK but in several parts I was not impressed. It's a Netflix series that will not win any prizes, they made better. Marseille is an interesting town, full of contradictions and a boiling pot full of crime and problems on one hand and promise onthe other side. Have the feeling there was more to be made out of this.