Anthracite

Let me be clear, this is a mess.

The premise is quite interesting and some scenes are quite beautiful and breathtaking and some of the actors are actually believable (kudos to Hatik in particular).

I grew up watching French TV shows and they act like they are on stage and it's either over the top or not acting at all in general...

But with a Netflix budget and actually believing on some of the cast and crew it looked passable.

There are so many faults in the scenario and gaps in the story and it's super annoying... But I did finish it. That's like a plus... Not great, but better than the usual.

Let's start with the lead character, your father is kidnapped because he was a journalist reported on or wrote about a cult that all committed suicide, she writes for some online blog about solving mysteries, murder, suicide, kidnapping, and another amount of other supposedly serious unsolved crimes. She comes off over the top in any encounter she has with people, but her script is vague and shallow, which she somehow thinks she can overcome, wild facial expressions and some weird tattoo on the bottom of her eye. This is uninterest and actually could've been epic if they had gotten someone who knew how to direct someone who had to act And something more than a grade School drama.

A girl goes looking for her disappeared father and finds out major secrets about herself and a city. Plenty of twists and killings, but for the most part the characters maintain more of a lighthearted borderline comedic vibe.

This show isn't great but its better than the average in several ways.

Ida is a star and lights up the screen in her scenes! She is mainly outrageous and hilarious, but also shows darker sides of personality. The show would have been 1 star without her performance/character.

The setting/scenery is another major plus for this show. The show avoids the pale/dreary stereotypical look of euro crime series. It also shows many beautiful mountains, drives, buildings etc, putting the viewer deeper into that region more firmly than most shows.

The pacing of the show could have been better. The show starts strong then glides a bit and then they packed too much into the final episode, could have added one more episode or paced it better to fit.

I binged watched in two days. From the first episode the story hooks you and then takes you on a crazy, twisty, turny rollercoaster ride right up to the 6th episode. There is so much plot, but you can keep up, I loved Ida from the start, she is endearing, vulnerable and simply a delight, I am not sure why she gets such negative reviews.

The story is jam packed with demon cult activity, protestors, incest, murder, more murder, car chases. Weird mountain people, dead sheep, poison and confused cops. You won't be sorry.

What I really enjoyed, was that it ended without any loose ends and questions. If you love a good thriller with a whole lot of story line, this one's for you.

I was left wanting more...

Most people that get annoyed by Ida didn't even watch further then the first 2 episodes. Don't get mislead by all those bad reviews, if u are looking for a new serie to watch try this one.

I myself didn't get annoyed by Ida, I don't know why so much other people do. It was clear for me from the first few episodes that see had a fatal sickness, they also explained why her personality was that way mostly because her bad social skills because she hadn't a lot of real life contact with people only over the internet.

I give the serie 7 stars. I like the characters and in 6 episodes u are able to learn about them. There are some random things that were unnecessary, from the top of my head one where Ida gets visual emoijs out of nowhere that don't really add something and they didn't do it often enough to let the viewer really get it.

The serie is about a cult and it has a few deeper meanings that are really fun to get when u get further into the series, really fun plottwists. I did get the feeling that the last few episodes had a big increase in pace, it didn't feel rushed so it isn't a bad thing but u could not really lose your attention otherwise u could miss something important in the story.

It's of course ur own choice if u want to watch this serie, but please don't get influenced by the bad reviews. It isn't that bad as they say. Serie is a good choice when looking for something to watch, only 6 episodes, try to get to 4 if u don't like it by then I don't know what went wrong.