East West 101

I have just watched the final episode of this outstanding Australian police drama and about the only thing that surprises me is how few people seem to be even aware of its existence. Every episode is like a high class feature film. You simply will not see anything better from anywhere in the world. I don't really want to write 10 lines - I just want to implore you to watch it for yourself. Featuring some of Australia's finest actors and a very evocative musical score, it portrays a gritty picture of Australia's urban underbelly. The script is tight and twitchy and never a dull moment. Every aspect is simply superb. This edgy drama is an absolute must - do not miss it!

I've seen only 2 episodes so far, but both have been very good.

Very believable acting by the main character, the Muslim police officer. I'm not really sure where the action takes place, either New Zealand or Australia.

This show is very different from US cop shows (ex. CSI: Miami or Third Watch). More fast-paced, less focus on forensics but more emphasis on the characters and how they get on with each other.

The only problem is the heavy accent of the actors. I have to turn on the text caption to figure out what they're saying because they talk very fast and half the time it doesn't sound like English (and yes I know the main character speaks arabic sometimes... that's not what I'm talking about).

This is the best police drama series I've ever seen, and probably one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. I can't wait for the new season (starting at the end of September in Australia). Watch it for yourself and enjoy - you won't be disappointed.

There is a sense of realism and character depth that is rare for TV. The acting is top class, and you find yourself drawn in and wanting more. It's also visually appealing and the characters have a sex appeal that comes from being so emotionally available to the viewer (and yes, they are a good looking lot too). The plots are complex yet easy to follow, probably because the scripts are so good.

The shaky camera work is just too distracting for me. There's a roughness to the work, speaking too fast, unpleasant editing. Sorry it's a no for me. I do understand that it's a worthy undertaking but my main interest is entertainment and the technical problems in this take me out of the experience.

This is one of those TV drama series that when you watched the first couple of episodes, it looked so promising, but after that, each episode you watched, the rating just keeps coming down unstoppable.

All the leading cops in this series are very unprofessional, even amateurish. The female chief kept having sexual relationships with her senior detective and having another affair with the outsider. The two senior detectives even had fist fight in the office. Their family members kept meddling with their police works. They even could give up and drop what they were doing in any police investigation to take care of their family matters right away soon after they received calls from their wives or kids. A big Australian metropolitan city turned out to look like a Middle East shanty town. The soundtrack was even tuned in Arabic music completely that would make you feel like watching a Muslim country soap opera.

In the early episodes of Season 2, we saw the guy went undercover, but the lazy script made him so easy to be an undercover to infiltrate the arms dealer and so easily became his confidante in an unbelievable short period of time. As we used to know, if a guy was chosen to be an undercover, there would be a thorough, almost split-the-hair filtering process to build the guy's personal background, family and social history, fake identifications, even with fake jail time, whatever that these information and material could be used to prove he is the real deal. But in this lazy and amateurish episodes of season 2, the guy simply waltz into the arms dealer's organization without being checked out thoroughly by the crime syndicate. What became even more ridiculous is we saw this guy would go home kissing wife and kids, answering phone calls and, Jesus, could go back to his police headquarter talking to his partner, his superior chief, participate meetings. Well, if becoming an undercover so easily like what saw in the brainless season 2, everybody could become undercover as easy as this guy.

From Season 2, this series did show its weakness and continued the deterioration and almost became quite laughable. What made me feel more uncomfortable and painful was seeing how Australia almost became a Muslim country in this series, even the soundtrack was using Middle Eastern music, and they made it in 2007 to 2011. I simply couldn't imagine what Australia looks like in 2023.