The Swarm

Once again I almost miss out on a series because I made the mistake of reading reviews on imdb, but thankfully I decided to watch it and make up my own mind, yes it is a little bit slow in parts, but nowhere near as bad as some have said. The story is actually very good, as is the acting, and yes things do actually happen, also there's a couple of familiar faces, Rosabell Laurenti Sellers from Game of Thrones, and Rune Temte from The Last Kingdom.

So if anyone is thinking of watching this, don't be put off by the reviews on here, watch it for yourself and make up your own mind, like me you may be pleasantly surprised.

None of the critics like this series. I do! The book, which I read 20 years ago, was at the level of a penny dreadful, with amateurishly crafted action scenes copied from movies and implausible characters. All this is no longer present in the first three episodes of der Schwarm, or has been completely deleted from the script. No more military saving the world, no more Wolfgang Emmerich doomsdays on the screen. Instead, slow plot developments with small, subtle catastrophes. This makes you want more and is decidedly different from the usual German series you see on TV. And fortunately, different from the book!

The massive, very thick book was no masterpiece neither is the tv show one, but the special effects are ok, there is a lot of blurring and vignetting what i don't like, but the visuals are solid for tv. The story telling is slow with many pretty boring dialogues, but i like that there is no social media and no mobile phones, no cctv, like in the book. With so many different tv stations involved, you have a huge and probably very expensive overhead of people, The production if filmed in different languages and in some scenes one person is dubbed the other is not what is hard to watch. The amount of money put into this production is eye watering, but most of the actors are only known well in their home country, mostly from france sweden, canada... and germany. Casting Klaas Heufer Umlauf is a slap in the face of the peer actors as he cannot act, sorry.

I heard a few bad things before watching. I don't agree with them.

Having seen three episodes so far, it seems to be a good show. Of course, there are five more episodes to go. We will see if they change my mind.

What's good so far is the build up of suspense. You get the idea that there is something up pretty fast, but you are kept clueless about the details. Some think it's a bit long-winded, but I like the pace of the first three episodes.

They saved money and kept the action/disaster scenes a bit short, but I don't mind that too much.

I read the book when it came out, almost 20 years ago. I don't remember much, so I don't mind that there are differences.

Some really grumpy reviews, here. Some people should ask themselves why they expect so much. Personally, if I like the concept, I can pretty much use my own imagination to fill the void and, in this case, the concept is an interesting one. 'The Earth fighting back' is slowly developing into a thought provoking genre. One that's highly relevant to today's global discourse; the earth will live on without us if we don't kill it first. If, like some others here, you need your movies/tv/music/art to do all the work for you, then yes, give it a miss. If not and you've got some hours to kill, give it a go 🤷‍♂️