Crônicas de San Francisco

I was very excited about this new series on Netflix, where love is standing central. Love told in many ways... new love, family love, love for friends. There are quite a lot of characters passing by in a short time, but in some way you get easily connected to their stories and all lead actors try to bring as many depth to their characters as possible. It doesn't want to be pretentious, which I was afraid of. Tales of the City does deliver some great stories. This should be clearly a series which needs more story and episodes to give some characters more space to tell their story. But, it's all heart warming and just the sort of series what we need these days. If your heart isn't made of stone, I'm sure you will melt in a heartbeat.

I had alread red the Tales Of the City books at least the first 5 or so, and lived in the Bay Area in the early 80s when the books were being published to my then delight. So these remarks are from an oldie.

The Netflix 2019-extensions of the Tales Of the city saga is ten hours of uneven yet satisfying setup for perhaps another future generation of tales.

It's presented in the form of a whodunnit (whoisdoingit) plot with a some wrapping up of previous loose ends with new characters to carry it forward. Seems each episode has a different writer so the intensity varies between episodes. Superficially it's just the same old nonsense as the previous series, but this time with a slower pace and with current obsessions and topics. Mr Maupin makes a cameo as usual.

Nice that the Gene Compton's cafeteria event gets attention, no doubt will bring that to international attention.

My initial reaction was distaste at episodes-1 and 2. I wanted to dislike this effort out of imaginary respect for the old characters. I did not immediately like the new younger characters until later in the series.

Despite the dodgy timeline (Michael Tolliver is portrayed as 54 when 64 might be more consistent with the books ) and the initial difficulty of accepting the new younger characters, it won me over. Some scenes dragged however. Episode-3 dinner scene was intense, as was a young character rifling though an older character's 80s address book with most names crossed out, a familiar agony for my generation.

Nice musical background too.

In short schmatltzy magical soap for millennials and nostalgic oldies.

I'm two episodes in, I'm quite enjoying it, but the flaws are glaringly obvious. I'll start with the biggest one and that is the supposed gap in decades that has occurred. I would have much preferred that it was set in the 90s or early 2000s, with the first series being set in the 70s this just doesn't add up for me. I'm finding it hard to move past it and very distracting.

The second flaw is the constant nods and winks to the younger generation and references to Instagram etc. There was an annoying pause in the flower shop when a customer paid for his purchase using his phone. This approach, which I think is intentional, is incredibly obnoxious.

Aside from these criticisms, I'm still a fan of the original material, and I am hopeful it settles down. Laura Linney rocks

I was really looking forward to the updated version, as I have seen every episode as it originally aired on PBS. The story-line was great, it was awesome to see the original actors'actresses reprising their iconic roles. Then came "the twins". Absolutely not even needed to be a part of the series. Those characters ruined it for me. I understand that perhaps the creator wanted to include Millennials to introduce the series to a new generation, but OMG, the extreme stereotypes of our youth and their digital habits seem to have gone too far, and the outcome that was in the show was not only extremely annoying but downright ridiculous. And to think I was worried about the stereotypes of the LGBTQ community.

I really wanted to like this series and went into it with a very generous, open mind because it's the sort of series I tend to enjoy. Unfortunately the weak writing, wooden acting, constant cliches and cloyingly over-sentimentalized tropes made it really difficult to love.

I did stick with it in hopes that it would 'get better' but unfortunately it never did. A real shame because the idea had potential but it felt more like a bad after school special than a ground-breaking diversity story. It actually feels dated (in a bad way) and it's from 2019.

I gave it 7 stars because there are so few LGBT-friendly series out there I just didn't have the heart to give it less, but if I was being more honest it really doesn't deserve much more than a 5 or 6. While it does have some charming moments, it's too cutesy and devoid of grit to be truly ground-breaking.