Mirage

In the trivia section of this series, following information is given:

"The first TV series produced and released as part of The Alliance, a co-production agreement announced in 2018 between European broadcasting groups France Télévisions (France), Rai (Italy) and ZDF (Germany) in order to pool resources and fund ambitious productions to compete with original productions from American streaming services such as Netflix."

if these European giants come together to produce something that is too hard to bear like this one, they shall as well close the shope and leave..

it was tooo bad..

i watched it french dubbed.. it was even more bad.. i assume in the english original some parts are in english, some parts are in french.. so what they did is they only dubbed the parts where english is spoken.. by a dubbing artist other than the leading actress!!! so what happens is suddenly her voice changes as the scenes flow as she swicthes from english to french and vice versa..

and the production, script qualities match the dubbing quality.. such an epic failure!!! such a big flop!!

Clive Standen's eyes are too close together and that's about the best thing I can say about this mess! As another reviewer said, the main chick, who is supposed to have a high-powered job seems never to be at work, the son is a pouting little oik and everyone else is surplus to requirements. His Aussie accent is passable.

Frankly, I started way it without any expectation. Just the storyline seemed intriguing. I know there are some plot holes, but considering the budget and production house it's pretty decent outcome. Stars gave solid performance, the locations were eye catching. Story of global corporate espionage ring added with a long lost love interest added the spice that was needed to carry the show.

Might not be a HBO/Netflix/Prime production standard but considering everything, it was decent. May be more than decent! Figure it out !

And all this is served in Abu Dhabi with a German touch... Should/could be something for everyone, but the result is another thriller where renegades and "unsophisticated" specialists attempt to avoid a disaster. As often in (mostly) U. S. series, lenient people become heroes overnight, getting ready for chases and weapons within some hours, and viewers are "confused" using mysterious events and clips from the past... The venue was evidently chosen for their contribution to the series budget :) - although it is exotic and beautiful and makes many to (re)visit the Emirates again.

As for the cast, most performers were unknown to me, except Grégory Fitoussi, but even his role was too ordinary. The leading performances were not too impressive and several characters did not bring additional value to the Series (e.g. Zack and his teen friends). Thus, Mirage has some kind of entertaining value and 6 episodes is not too long, but as there are hundreds of more interesting related series out there, it is not a creation that brings you wow! On novel effects.

The glitzy ex-pat middle east is a big turn off and of course it is a major character as most locations tend to be. But if you can focus past that and get into the emotional heart of the characters then you have some chance of engagement in the thriller aspects of the plot. Marie-Josée Croze, the female lead, holds the screen very well, though some of her motivations were a bit far fetched at times. Clive Standen does tough guy running, fighting, safe breaking, driving dangerously all very well but the emotional close ups are not his forte. Considering this was a coproduction between Euro heavyweights it was not a spectacular success, but remains good, solid viewing that improves as you move through the 6 episodes. Clearly set up for a follow- up series, lets see if they get the cash. I'm sure the cast would like to do it all again.