Marseille

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.

As an American of European descent I loved these series. All lead actors put out great performances. Depardieu didn't disappoint. May be french audience is giving it poor ratings, but as someone who doesn't speak or understands French, I loved it. I always watch foreign movies, including this one, in original language with English subtitles. I also loved Borgen, the Danish political drama series. Well done, both Marseille and Borgen.

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.

This was supposed to be a French version of something like House of Cards. It is about the rivalry between two candidates for the political leadership in Marseille. Both Gérard Depardieu and Benoit Magimel are two good, and very different, actors for the main characters. This creates an interesting dynamic between the two.

Still, the drama feels quite flat and stereotype in its execution. Actors are overplaying at the expense of nuances, subtleties and leaving basically nothing left to the imagination of the viewer. The storyline feels very linear and predictable, there are too few twists that keeps the interest up. Also it seems like very boring politically correct approach where the good folks always are on the left side and the bad ones always on the right side of politics.

The series could have been so much more than it was. A pity with so strong casting.

No surprise that it was cancelled after two seasons.

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.