Osmosis

Osmosis spends so much time trying to be abstractly clever, it forgets to engage with the viewer. Its like a visit to one of those modern art galleries a snooty friend drags you along to. Sounds alright until you realize its attempts to be daring and cutting edge, amount to shallow pretension marketed as art.

In my view a similar, if not quiet so harsh conclusion, could be reached about this series. There is far far too much time spent on visual imagery, abstract thoughts and emotions. It wants to be engaging, the problem is it never steps far beyond its own surreal world view, to offer anything meaningful to the viewer.

The result is a series I found impossible to watch for any length of time. The acting is fine and the visuals well rendered but its lack of a real story with body to go along with its soul simply leaves you wanting anything to fill the abstract void it ends up representing.

4/10 from me.

I'm finished 6 out of 8 episodes for season 1. So far, the sci-fi aspects of it are intriguing enough to keep me watching, but it's wrapped around an extremely dubious misconception of what constitutes love. Lots of over-the-top orgy and skin scenes. I will be putting this on the back burner for possible later completion.

I know most people say that it has an interesting starting and then it runs slowly, but maybe these people have not seen the episodes 4-8. As far as I am concerned, I find the pace okay, as it gives us the opportunity to get to know the characters and mostly the testers, as well as it provides us with an interesting plot. So people: stick to the show till the end, and give it a chance, even if you find it dull. Of course, maybe it just fits better to me and not all people have the same taste. Definitely recommended to french learners, as the vocabulary is quite simple and they use a lot of everyday language which will help you to get familiar with the pace of the language.

Utopian or dystopian atmosphere? I don't really care anymore: I did not concur with a far-fetched script and, in a secondary way, with an excessively plush atmosphere (champagne, Porsche, Haussmanian buildings, ...). I was bored, almost as much as the actors apparently! So, I cowardly abandoned, after two episodes. Although zapping becomes an easy habit with the ultra-quantitative NetFlix, I do not think this series deserves more consideration.

I have seen many negative reviews on it, so I felt like it needed some back-up here, since I find it well done, as another reviewer put it: Osmosis has lots of great ingredients that make up for a good series. I find the acting pretty good, the pacing, the images, the script. Besides the fact that we don't see familiar faces in terms of well-known TV or big screen actors (but hey, that's a good thing, since we could discover lots of fresh, new talents), I can't see many flaws. Two thumbs up from me.