Der Club der singenden Metzger

I love a good immigration drama, but all during this one I felt like an outsider looking in, trying to get a grip on the underdeveloped characters. I think too much was crammed into four short episodes.

I must give credit to the actress who played Eva...her riveting scenes brought me joy and tears!

We eagerly started this series but were sadly disappointed by the shallow plot. The acting was quite good, but Erdrich's plot was simply mangled. Major characters were actually deleted. Important events were altered or omitted entirely. The series should have been increased to at least six episodes. The result would have been so much better. This seems to be the direction PBS is taking these days, where the costumes and hunky guys outweigh deeper matters. Oh for the days when we were offered programs with more weight than a dandelion seed! That is so sad. The book really deserved to be done properly.

Much as I enjoyed Croatia as the setting for North Dakota, I was very disappointed with the shallow and eviscerated plot. If you are looking for a movie like the book, look elsewhere. This is like someone extracting a couple pages from a long graphic novel--just the shell, a little PC to be current, and shallow in characters and story.