The Team

I typically gravitate towards European crime thrillers but The Team left me cold.

The key reason is the so called team are in fact dispirit groups in different nations, who mostly only come together remotely. Its disconcerting, undermining the possibility of any real group cohesion and chemistry between the cast.

Worse still, this approach makes the story hard to follow, constantly breaking up the flow, as it hops, in jarring fashion, between peace meal teams in different countries and geographic locations.

On the upside the acting is reasonable but I found the characterisations a bit clinical and matter of fact. The story is a good one once you get to grips with it but it takes real effort to follow along.

In summary I wanted to like The Team but the core concept is, in my view, flawed, creating issues I don't feel can really be remedied. 5/10.

I've wanted to watch this for a while since I'm a fan of Lars Mikklesen's work and love European crime dramas, and have travelled extensively in Belgium and Germany. The first season has a great plot, fascinating characters, believable plotline (to the degree its possible) and is very enjoyable. The second has some great actors (totally different teams, no story overlap) and some compelling elements but the story is ultimately filled with problematic and questionable decisions which, without revealing too much, leaves it far less of a satisfying watch despite some great dramatic scenes. Watch the first one it's a gripping story in many ways, but think twice about the second. I'd rate the first one 7/10 and the second 5/10. It's still watchable but there are too many moments of "why didn't they...?" to make it a truly believable scenario. I suspect the relative "failure" of the second season would've been why they chose not to continue with this interesting joint venture between the group of Danish, German, Belgian (and Austrian) collaborators on this project.

Two episodes into season #2 I was fast forwarding constantly because I found it dragging horribly ... but was curious about the outcome. Sometimes it's hard to look away from a car crash as they say ...and season #2 was certainly that. Awfully cliched characters and some pretty hard to believe police procedural work.

The casting is quite ok for the series, so that is a plus. The story for the first season is doing way more twists than the one for the second season, which seems to crumble under the burden of the message concerning the civil war in Syria. What is a bit sad about the production is that despite the international setup of the team, they never use the local language with subtitles. There are no communication issues between any members of the international team, nor are there any cultural differences leading to problems. Now the second season is a mess, since that season wants to unwrap all the issues related with the civil war in Syria - including the IS (in the series called caliphate union), cultural heritage, torture and the funding of terrorism. What was the worst is that more than once the members of the team go off by their own and endanger their lives. Also when they are going to arrest people, they never seem to be able to secure the back of a building as well, which makes the premise of an international team of top police people a ridiculous premise.

For decades, following the fall of Iron Curtain and fast development of technology, felonies and combating them have become more international as well, money laundry and human trafficking included. Thus, on one hand, it is interesting to follow diverse beautiful places and characters of different nationalities performed by respective actors speaking respective languages, but when the series of eight 1-hour episodes deals with one "enemy", then the plot becomes perfunctory and the role of leading characters unbalanced, with some obtaining too much unnecessary attention and the others' characteristics remain unfinished, with several questions unanswered.

The police characters are obviously realistic, but often not too interesting to follow, and even Lars Mikkelsen is unable to show his talent in full. Plus it is odd that Alexandra Rapaport had so insignificant character. And Jasmin Gerat as Jackie Müller and Veerle Baetens as Alicia Verbeeck provided just okay, but not memorable performance, and those depicting Lithuanians were not particularly catchy, somehow underlining the role of Eastern European villains. Plus, of course, Belgium as a symbol of negligence and corruption...

All in all, not a bad creation, but not on the level of e.g. The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey ("Ørnen: En krimi-odyssé).