Amo

Amo is about a teenager who slowly become involved in the drug industry. The series is set in the Philippines and the themes of the show is very timely as it deals with drugs and corruption. It's timely because this show deals with War on Drugs which is currently going on in this country. Kudos to the whole cast for realistic acting and the great Brilliante Mendoza for realistic portrait of war on drugs. This show sometimes may lack the action of Ang Probinsyano, a show also deals with the same theme but this show is all about cautionary tale about drugs. As a whole, even if you're not a fan of Direk Brilliante Mendoza, you will surely like this show. Amo is one of the underrated TV show of 2017! It's a show we should be proud of for it's originality and daring. Amo is definitely a worth recommended!

Four stars were taken off because of the production value. Everything's pretty low budget.

If you don't know anything about the Philippines, this show is for you. If you kind of know about the Philippines, this show is for you. If you know about the inner workings of Philippine society, this isn't for you.

I honestly thought the series was pretty bad in the storytelling department since there was no main goal for the entire season, but after thinking about the series, I don't think the series is supposed to be about the characters. It's probably about the current state of the Philippines' streets and police force. Joseph, Bino, and Rod are just a vessel for viewers to understand what the Philippines has been going through ever since Ferdinand Marcos' rule. The cinematography, especially in the first episode, highlights this focus. We get glimpses of school life and squatter villages in several long and wide-angle shots. Small montages with rap music mostly highlight life of the people around the main characters while speaking about different affairs in Philippine society. I don't think we're supposed to care about the characters at all, but to learn about the state of the Philippines.

Compared to other Filipino shows (especially on TFC or GMA), Amo is Oscar-worthy, especially for its relative originality, but the production is still pretty low budget. The Philippines doesn't seem to want to invest into its own visual arts, so that's understandable.

If you care about the acting, everyone's much, much better in their native language. If you've ever been around a Tagalog-speaking family and their Tagalog-speaking friends, the main and secondary characters in Amo are pretty much the same as that. Everyone else ranges from absolutely terrible to decent.

This is really well done... far from the usual teleseryes being shown in tv. I appreciate the cinematography as well as the different kinds of human scum shown. I don't see how it "glorified" the drug war... it's actually showing its good and bad parts. Reveals how everything can have a loophole and the problem is hard to fix. The rapping was ok. It gave an authentic slum/street vibe. Pretty sure the people that gave really low reviews didn't really watch the series with the intent to understand its context or underlying message. But whatever... it is still a must watch~

And I'm from the Philippines. I can't believe someone wrote a review stating how "nobody watched it here in the Philippines." Psshh. Stop spreading fake news.

This would be a good series showing an adaptation of Philippine's war on drugs. Never mind those who reviewed it with 1 or 2 stars, watch the series for yourselves.

Forget about the quality, forget about the cinematography, forget about the acting skills. When you grew in one of poverty stricken slums in the Philippines and have watched this series, you will know how close the depiction was in real life. Even the moduses, the actuation, the "kalakarans" are shown in a perspective of educating people who are well-off enough. I personally grew up in a squatters area where drug trade is rampant, gang fights and street riots are part of our daily lives. I must say, this series is the truest depiction of the kind of life we wish our children won't have to grow up to. Probably the reason it became so controversial in the Philippines, having the so called "elites of society" even made a petition to take it down Netflix is because it destroys their narrative. The kind of narrative that puts all the blame to the current administration but turns a blind eye to the reality on the ground. Kudos to the cast, kudos to the director, kudos to the writers and researches who captured the reality on the ground.