Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms

The characters arent even believable as bikers, especially the guy who plays Cesar, that guy looks like a short fat women with a wig and fake beard. I guess it's hard for feminine men to try and play tough manly men. What a waste of time!!!

I found this series excellent, with only a minor quibble or two. In the 90's I rode a Harley Davidson and belonged to a group who worked during the week, but spent their weekends hanging out at a bar run by one of the group, and taking rides together to wherever there was a barbecue or party on a Sunday. The rides had many stops at favorite bars. We lived in Florida and never missed Daytona bike week and Octoberfest. All wore black leather and patches, but no club colors as those in clubs stayed apart. In my opinion, the riders liked to dress up and imagine they were big bad tough guys living the life, but few would have seriously considered joining a violent outlaw club. Never once did I see a party were they got naked or indulged in the antics shown in the series. I saw lots of drinking, but no drugs.

As no mention was made of how these supposed outlaw bikers earned their living, and some of them appeared to have jobs, they seemed more like weekend bikers to me rather than the full time hard core 1% criminal bikers. Australia in the early 80's may have been different for all I know, as the criminal outlaw gangs were alleged to be into the drug trade.

I particularly liked the fact that the actors appeared to be riding the motor cycles - no stuntmen other than the one time a rider wore a helmet and was thrown from his bike. I had thought several of the mullet cuts were wigs, but as none of them flew off while riding (unless it was very good green screen work) I guess Damien Walshe-Howling isn't really bald after all.

The lead actor did an excellent job and handled a very good Scottish accent throughout. Not sure if it would convince a Glaswegian, but at least we could understand what he was saying, something I cannot do with Billy Connelly. Jock struck me as the kind of power drunk ex-military man said to wear his stripes on his pyjamas and drills his children like raw recruits. The military was likely the best time of his life and time stopped there for him. His ambition is to build the largest club in Australia, for no real reason other than ego, and anything getting in the way of his dream triggers his dark side.

I wish there had been more seasons, but of course, it would have to be fiction as the reason story ended when the bad guys faced justice.

I watched two whole episodes just to make sure. This really is mostly terrible, best illustrated by one unfortunate piece of casting.

Colin 'Caesar' Campbell was a big man, tall, broad shoulders, an imposing, perhaps threatening presence. He is portrayed here by Anthony Hayes, who is about as imposing as a teddy bear. He has narrow shoulders, a pot belly, he really isn't up to the job. He's not alone in that but, more than any other cast member, illustrates how this show falls so far short of anything remotely resembling a true portrayal of an outlaw motorcycle club.

It's quite clueless. These rough, tough bikies, who mostly look like a bunch of nice middle-class youngsters after a biggish weekend, ride around on shiny new Harleys, straight off the shop floor in 2011. So there you go, how many telephone calls would it have taken to line up some authentic old motorcycles? One, if you rang the right place, it wouldn't be that hard.

There are whole sequences where nothing happens, nothing is learned about the characters, the narrative grinds to a halt. There is the occasional brief flicker of a scene that isn't all that bad, usually featuring Callan Mulvey and Matt Nable , the two leads.

Okay, so we've got some pedestrian direction and photography, a lousy script, woeful casting, fair-to-middling acting, some reasonable art direction and set direction, poor attention to relevant detail and an overall look and feel of the whole project being rushed along too quickly. So it's pretty much your standard Australian teev series.

It's quite extraordinary in its own way. A show about bikies that is boring and mundane.

Overall I found this series to be quite good. The characters are believable and fairly true to the 1%ers I know.

I however find the absolute disregard for helmet laws to be very immersion breaking, helmet laws in Aus came in during 1961 (Jan 1st 1961) and the real 1%ers I know did not disregard the helmet laws (it wasn't worth the police hassle), especially considering this is set during the late 70's early 80's as is displayed by the cars shown, the characters in this show would have grown up with helmet laws in place therefore the characters would be likely to abide by the laws regarding helmet use. The only scene where a character is shown prominently wearing a helmet is one where the helmet clearly served it's purpose, he was injured not dead after suffering a head meets road incident. It is also very much an Americanisation of the series.

There is also a minor quibble that up until the mid-late 80's Harley's were not the bike of choice of the 1%ers it was generally heavily modified UJM's or British bikes.

I'm Not An MC I Wear A Cut But I Put Random Patches Not MC Colors The Bandidos Did not Have The Mexican Hat With Two Guns They Had The The Name And The Fat Mexican And Where They From Back In The 80s And The Bandidos Color Are Yellow And Red Not Yellow And Black Now Caesar Had A SGT AT ARMS But Also Had An Enforcer You Can Have Either A SGT AT ARMS Patch Or An Enforcer Patch But You Can't Have Both I'm 21 years Old I Know What I'm Talking About Shows OK But The Colors On The Characters Cuts Does Not Make Sense St All.