Comrade Detective

I absolutely loved this show and I hope there's a second season as some point! Tell you what's as funny as the show though! Some of these reviews where people thought it was a real show! Haha. I think my favourite comment from one reviewer was something about it being dubbed was annoying, and why the hell did they put them on when the Romanian actors had done such a good job!? Haha. I think the whole point flew straight over their head! The vast majority of Americans are too lazy to read subtitles, they certainly wouldn't watch an 80s Romanian cop show without it being dubbed. Even in one episode at the beginning Channing & Jon Ronson explain why they went the dubbed route for the supposedly "real show". I'm guessing the reviewer didn't make it to that episode before he'd made his mind up!

It's basically just really silly and over the top with very subtle lines that I personally found hilarious. For me there was a laugh a minute. I loved it from the get go. I'm lucky to have even heard about it really, I'm a huge Jon Ronson fan, of his books, audio books, and films he's credited with so I was just googling what he'd done lately and that's how I came across this, as I'd not heard about it prior, so I'm glad I did that google search as like I said, I really loved the show.

The only let down for me, and which stopped me from giving it a 10, was the ending of the finale, It is an absolutely stupid show with outrageous scenarios but even with that in mind I felt the ending was just a little too much! I won't go into it with spoilers but yeah, I just felt a tad let down with that.

It did say "to be continued" after that last episode anyway so here's to hoping for a 2nd season.

First off let's set the record... this isn't an actual show that aired of Romanian TV back in the 80's , it's meant to lead you to believe it was. Some of the actors playing the characters that are being dubbed by some of today's actors where not even born in the 1980's ... but the show is pretty good either way.

it is a good try and a great spoof series but even Communist propaganda was a bit more subtle.

The Communist propaganda movie heroes did not drink heavy or sleep around carelessly ( albeit seducing an imperialist women in the service of the Party would have been perfectly fine ). The filmmakers there were also all too conscious that the Soviet block realities were grittier so usually the movies would show more prosperity and modernity than was the case for the vast majority of the population. Only the best buildings and the nicest parts of the city would appear on screen. The main character of a Communist propaganda movie would be a happy worker or collective farmer (if he was a policemen he would have started as factory worker and then promoted for his qualities), wise and good-mannered, uninterested in material wealth and devoted to the building of the "multi-lateral developed socialist society and steady advancement toward the golden dream of humanity - the Communism". His parents would have been also of "healthy social origin" - also workers, peasants, socialist intellectuals, etc.

Albeit snitching for the regime was encouraged it would have been glorified - the persons reported to the authorities would be portrayed in a more negative manner and the person reporting to the authorities would appear more heroic and occupying the higher moral ground ( eventually he/she would have tried to educate the "traitor to the people" but be rebuffed/ laughed at).

Communist movie makers watched Hollywood movies and would know how to tweak its recipes in the service of the Party.

It's so close. The biggest issue is that it looks too good. Part of the joke is that Communism is better than Capitalism...but not really. Instead, we get a glossy, overproduced product that couldn't possibly be what it pretends to be. There's far too much of the West in this show to establish the verisimilitude and that is the entire genius behind Garth Merenghi's Darkplace. Darkplace showed a horrible show produced by incompetent people and it kept up that fiction. Comrade Detective only gets half of the joke. Gorgeous cinematography, sweeping camera pans with nary a trace of the grit of the "source material." If you've ever seen any Eastern European from that time period then you know it doesn't look good. Even under the rubric of "restoration" it falls apart pretty quickly.

The other issue is they couldn't decide whether it's a comedy or an homage to bad TV. There's not enough jokes to be rollickingly funny and the plot is too believable to really sustain jokes. The stuff with chess is great but they should have hit it harder. The profanity seems really out of place to pass it off as an actual TV show. Perhaps that wasn't their vision and this was the product they wanted to produce. However, just throwing a few communist phrases out in the middle of police drama doesn't create a world. It just points out that they didn't fully think the project through.

Still, it's a good effort.

Yes I am from Romania, so maybe I am a little biased. But this show made me remember some times which were hard for us but for me as a kid, were some of the happiest in my life. If you like history, or have lived and "enjoyed" communism in your life,or you are from Romania and can appreciate a smart TV show, then this is something that will make you an instant fan. Having said that, this is maybe too niche in a word dominated by superpower shows , horrible murders TV episodes or MTV Ridiculousness like shows. The so called "found footage of lost TV shows" mixed with the propaganda tag that the so-called founders are putting on it is for once exactly what the show is . This is a propaganda TV series about 2 cops trying to find the killer of their detective friend and fighting with the West Communism ideology in a 1980's Bucharest Romania ( still under the strong arm of the communist party ). It recreates a 80's propaganda atmosphere with minute attention to details that only a few might fully appreciate like for example the televised chess matches, the Nadia Comaneci craze , the old Dacia cars, the clothes that the actors are wearing, the police methods , the guns , the over-repetition of communism ideals and tropes, the demonizing of the west. While I agree that the show "looks too good " for the so-called propaganda style, I quickly forgot about it while watching. Don't expect over the top villains or action ( although it does have a lot of it ). It's like watching the first Expendables. All the 80s glory with all the new that the present has to offer. But from the other side of Iron Curtain. The show is what Miami Vice would have been if made in Romania before the fall of communism. I would give it a 10/10 just for the aftertaste and for making me smile so wide but I am giving it a 9 just to try and curb my enthusiasm. I am pretty sure it's not going to be the next GOT, but I am pretty sure it will develop a small but devoted cult following. I love the actors and they are doing a very good job. Special kudos for the big names in Hollywood which were involved for the dubbing. It was the biggest surprise I had this year.