The Booth at the End

This has been a fantastic show! Twenty minutes flies by as you watch individuals come to seek out their hearts desire by making deals with a creature that could as likely be an angel as a devil. Tasks and deals begin to intertwine and form a cosmic game of chess, but the man in the booth at the end is merely keeping score.

Not only is this an engrossing series, but a masterful accomplishment of screen writing. The entire show is filmed from a booth in a diner. If someone had simply told me about this show I'd be convinced it couldn't work, but the concept of storytelling is given new life in this small screen format. Each contracted party returns to the diner to update the scorer of their progress and through their updates we learn how deals have gone horribly wrong or transformed into unforeseen joy. I cannot recommend this enough. I hope for more.

A man sits in a diner at 'The Booth at the End'. He is visited by people who want something. He creates the opportunity for them upon them taking on the task he sets them. They each return to him to discuss their progress. "That's the Deal"!

The show is filmed entirely in one location and the episodes last less than 4 minutes each. Yet every time an episode ends it feels like a cliff hanger. The impressive thing may be in how the script is laid out and how tightly it is written. 'The Man' whether he's in control of the conversation or not is interested in the finer details and we therefore get into the real mindset of the characters and are taken to a level that we may never of thought about asking ourselves. The really impressive thing is that each episode is never shot the same way twice, its not that they don't use the same camera angle in different episodes, its more about the style and how each new piece of the puzzle comes to affect the way you look at the show as a whole.

To fully understand the genius of the show I can only recommend that you watch it. It needs patience and an open mind to start with. If you are willing to give it that, then be prepared to be intrigued!

It's so rare to find a series that is not predictable on some level. Something about even the way this show is shot and the quality and sparseness of the audio seems different than most shows. I love not knowing... I have my theories but it's not really clear to me who the main character is or where he comes from or if he's even mortal and who he works for or if he's more in control than he claims or WHAT. I did not at first expect the overlap between some of the various story-lines, so there was a growing pattern emerging as we (viewers) get deeper into it. The fact that some characters end up having desires that are in direct opposition means that only one can succeed unless one changes what it is that s/he wants, and that makes it even more intriguing. I love that it all takes place in the diner and what happens outside that confined world is only revealed through verbal accounts of the characters - proving that you don't need to see explosions or shoot-outs to make a program work if the premise is interesting enough. I really hope there will be further seasons, and that the story will be fully realized.

Myself, I'm more into Hollywood produced comedies or sci-fi movies, but watching first five minutes of this actually dragged me in. So, to everyone that is expecting something else than a psychological drama-series full of riddles, i would not recommend it. To everyone else, if you're into psychological stories, this is a very interesting one. It challenges an individual to consider their moral norms. How far would you go? I'm not very acquainted with this genre, but unlike some films, it doesn't repel or scare me. But you still won't watch it just for fun. So the bottom line is, a perfect mixture of a psychological drama and a sci-fi movie or a thriller.

I was intrigued right from the start. The writing and performances are really top notch. It's a shame it wasn't extended but then could they have sustained the imagination and quality?