Knokke Off

Throw Elite and Outer Banks in a bowl, mix it together and then you'll have Knokke Off. It's a surprisingly good show and the actors are way better than I had expected. It's the perfect summer show where sex, drugs and murder are the main subjects resulting in an interesting and entertaining story. It does have quite some things that are similar to the first season of the Spanish Netflix show Elite but not in a way that it's too obvious. I actually thought it was a clever way to base a new show off of such a massive success such as Elite, without it being a knock off (pun intended). Definitely looking forward to a possible season 2!

This series really is no more than a soap opera. It's full of the typical clichés you would see in any youth series. I won't spoil the storylines, but you can think of the most common themes in any soap opera or youth series and put them together. Anyway, as you can tell.. it wasn't for me and I don't think it's the quality content some claim it to be. There was no originality and most of the times it was very predictable.

But apparently it ticks all the boxes for teenagers/young adults: Hot guys, hot girls, sex, drugs, a girl struggling with her disorder, more sex, an evil father, rich people and a not so rich person... etc. Etc.

So, why did I finish it? There was one mystery that I was curious about, so I wanted to know what happend, so there's that. And the entire series feels like eye-candy, so.. when you've got nothing better to do you keep watching for the hot actors and locations.

Some positives: Beauuutiful locations! And the acting was above average. Especially Alexander and Louise.

If you like shows like Gossip girl, Skam and The OC, this is for you. This is kind of like the European version of gossip girl. There's extremely rich kids, and the poor outsider. I must say that some of the storylines got a bit boring, But then something exciting happened. The camera quality was amazing. One of the best things was the cast, cuz every character is hot. The acting from Alex and Louise is also extremely good for this type of series. There were a few scenes that were a bit inappropriate, but nothing extreme. The show ended with a big cliffhanger. Hopefully the new season comes soon.

The problem with Knokke Off (High Tides) season 2 is that too little is continued from season 1. New characters are more focused than some of the youths (Matti, Victor and Margaux), despite there are some unresolved issues among those three in this season which would have been a lot more interesting to watch being dwelled into, than scenes of Tennis being played, or paint thrown around.

The cruelty and carelessness of the characters also seems too over the top to be believable. Viviane de Muynck has the matriarch role down to the teeth the way she plays it. Unfortunately though the writers have not dedicated as much time researching law issues as coming up with scenes to put Willem de Schryver's naked butt on display, as a consequence a rather moronic situation occur, where apparantly the CEO of a company don't have the faintest idea who the major, and controlling, shareholder of the company is.

There also are some episodes where too many stages have been ommitted for the remaining scenes to correspond well to each other. Must be careful not to spoil too much, but what happen is in one scene a character angrily hit another - next we see them they are best of friends, but how that happened we don't get to see. In the first season there also was revealed one of the characters had a secret gay lover. That gay lover is apparently gone, and now replaced with another. Over 8 episodes we see the two together as a couple twice, once in a car, and once under a duvet in a bed.

Extending length of episodes, or moving focus from the new characters and developments to the core youth, would have improved both storylines and character development.

Season 2 is not bad, it is just not the quality the cast could have delivered, had the storylines and character developments been as solid as many of them are. Kes Bakker as Matti is very convincing, pity he hasn't got more scenes - especially interactions with Victor, Margaux and Alex. Dries Vanhegen as John is a character that could have become a father figure for Alex, similar to Jaques with Daen in the first season. But unfortunately Willem de Schryver and Dries Vanhegen have too few, and too different, scenes together to show such a development. Which makes John's presence in one scene in particular hard to understand.

Again the problem is scenes not corresponding well with each other, because those develments that could have bridged the two scenes, have been completely ommitted.

I had hoped season 2 would have brought more nuance, and help us viewers better understand and relate to key characters. That didn't happen, they are the same as they were in season 1. There has been announced a third and final season. Maybe they will develop and grow more emotionally in that one? Fingers crossed.

Being Belgian, I had received several notifications about 'Knokke off' (original title) so I ultimately decided to give it a shot with ep1.

I was thoroughly surprised...good acting, good camera work and a nice story based more or less on real life (it is well known here in Belgium the seaside city of 'Knokke' indeed has many rich posh people).

So yea, I binged the show in 2 evenings....it is well written (thanks to Luc Wyns), good character.development.

I did not like the last episode as everything got a bit too rushed....and apparently a semi-open ending (which I hate) is popular nowadays.