Estonia

"Estonia" is one of the best "based on true story" tv series ever made. It's not done like action-thriller about ships sinking or like court-drama with monologues that try too hard to be epic. No, it's respectfully done story about devastating tragedy and that tragedy's influence on society. What's the most important for me, creators respected tragedy by not making speculations about it's causes or how it went down, respected victims and their families by not turning "Estonia" in action schlock and respected us - viewers - by giving multiple points of view on these events for us to better understand why events after the tragedy played out like they did in real life.

"Estonia" is a show about conscience, about world where nothing is simple, even though it should be. We can see how blame can be shifted in every direction, while almost everyone is set to avoid acceptance of it. At some point we can start wonder: "Does those theories (explosion, submarine, other ship, military etc) about ships sinking are concieved based on some real evidence or on the basis of some loud parties that wanted to shift blame elswhere, to redirect grieving people away from them by making up false stories and false enemies?" It is important to point out that series creators do not hit you over the head with moral, but it is in there, audience must be opened to see it, audience must listen to understand the messages series are trying to get across.

I admire how series creators handled themes of the series. I respect series creators for the job they done.

Actors and crew also did marvelous job!

If I had to say just a few words about these series, then I would say: "Estonia" is a superb tv series.

"Too much talking and arguing for nothing."

Positives: Actors were ok. Cinematography ok. Production quite ok.

Negatives:

Too few information/story about what happened on Estonia before sinking, even though 137 people really survived. Most of the story is just random short survivor stories with no real value to anyone.

Sounds were bad, sometimes effects and/or music was so loud that you could not hear the dialogue.

This could have been 3 hour tight package (3-4 episodes), but now it was boring 8 episode/hour speaky-talky-marathon. Too much repetition on scenes.

Conclusion:

Do not waste your time on this, just watch some documentary if you are interested on Estonia disaster.

As an estonian and being at this time of event very close to the tragedy, I say, I can't watch more than one episode at once - it brings back all those emotions, the pain which hunts me all my life since that happened.

It's really well done Estonian memorial if I can name it like that. It' s close to real with all emotions, the on-going political games around it and the sincere "why couldn't we help?" question.

The characters are believable, not overplayed as I expected - don't forget, we didn't know exactly what really happened, and had this "its gonna be alright " feeling quite long after.

For now I Ithink it is the closest to the truth the "Estonia" can get.

From a Swedish point of view, the sinking of M/S Estonia is the disaster that has caused the second most deaths in modern times. By far. It is only the tsunami in 2004 that has taken the lives of more Swedes. As is so often the case with this type of major events, there has been an aftermath with some conspiracy theory elements.

The event itself contains a lot of drama, and would therefore be grateful for a fictional depiction. However, this TV series manages this opportunity rather poorly. Much of the series focuses on the commission that was set up after the accident, which was supposed to investigate what the cause was. This is mixed with flashbacks from the actual course of the disaster.

The Commission is portrayed as a dysfunctional collection of people, to say the least, where not least the Swedish participants seem particularly unsympathetic and unprofessional. It's pretty much only the Finnish hero who behaves. Since the process is depicted so fragmentarily, it is difficult to get any context around the strange behavior that the characters exhibit.

The story is generally far too unfocused. There are many people involved whose story is told too briefly to get any understanding or any real commitment. This makes this basically very dramatic event in this fictional depiction quite boring.

Maybe they should have spiced it up a bit with a love story between a woman from first class and a man from third class. A scene where they stand in the bow and pretend to fly, to a ballad by Celine Dion might also have worked. But these ideas are perhaps already taken by someone else.

It's not easy to make a tv-series about a catastrophy with good taste today. The audience has short attention span and is used to overstimulation. Anything not predigested and sensationalized is quickly labelled boring. It's a series with eight episodes yet people complain when everything isn't clear and explained within the first 15 minutes. If you stop scrolling as you watch and concentrate a little bit the show offers a chilling and gripping account of the events. The scenes are atmospheric, understated yet effective. The characters and their reactions are believable and at times very touching. The series does a great job showing the disaster and it's aftermath from different perspectives. But if you are looking for quick answers and straightforward action scenes Estonia is definitely not for you.