Um Natal Nada Normal

I liked this one. It had (1) somewhat different culture than the usual fare and (2) an after school special on growing up for the twenty somethings.

I liked how the family was drinking so much to mask uncomfortable feelings - just like real life families! I liked how they tried to shoehorn joy into past feast traditions when they would probably have more fun with new traditions - just like real life! I liked how all of the people were flawed - just like real life!

It was a real life Christmas that actually portrayed the reality of going back to your small hometown. You can have fun with friends, tolerate your family, start to feel the joy of becoming the responsible adult in the family, enjoy the feasting, and learn that gifts will always be mismatched. Also it shows the forced celebrations with a recipe of specific traditions (put forward by the mother in this instance) were not really the point of Christmas nor the source of joy. Communal celebrations and real friendships, conversations and support for family are more important.

It's really good but worth noting it's dubbed English, I didn't realise this at first and thought it was out of sync...it's really good! Give it a go if you like sarcasm and Christmas.

I liked it to begin with and was happy to see it was filmed in Monschau where I've been. My brother took me there years ago when he lived nearby, and I would have recommended the series to him and others who were with me, but by the end it was a bit too sentimental and mediocre even for me. (I swear Luke Mockridge looks like Chris O'Dowd.)

I'm not a real fan of Luke and got talked into watching this show by my wife. But boy was I happy about it. It's a light enjoyable tv show. It never gets to cheese. The family life is shown in a quite realistic way but what I find even more important is the way that our jelousy works is shown pretty good and how we can get lost in unimportant stuff without noticing that we are the ones limiting ourselfs and not the others.

It starts off reasonably funny. Bit weird premises but ok, il'll go with it. Towards the end it get cringeworthy. So all in all mediocre.