Slozna braca

This is one of my favorite serials made in ex-Yugoslavia. It has a lot of humor,pure,simple,Bosnian humor,understandable for everybody. The only object of these Bosnians making jokes is Bosnia and their people themselves. Creator of a show,Nele Karajlić is a front man of a rock band 'Zabranjeno pušenje'(more famous to the rest of the world as No smoking orchestra). 'Složna braća' takes place in a bar with a same name which is on a no man's land,under authority of piece forces.Muslims,Serbs and Croatians all come here,waiting for a secret delivery that will help one of them to win a war(in Bosnia,1991-1995). Who,when and how will bring that secret object-no one knows!

I like this show a lot. It had a lot of originality, and a very good acting crew. There are lot of new talents shown here. For instance, Vladimir Savcic and Nele Karajlic who are, basically, the singers, have shown here great acting talent. The plot is excellent. It happens right after the war between Serbs, Croats and Muslims is over. The only thing left is a piece of no man's land for which they couldn't deal about sharing. The only object on this land is a café called Slozna Braca (Friendly Brothers) owned by Fiko Halimic and his brother Mute. The café serves for all three sides as a place for spying each other and making illegal deals. The main characters are actually two persons of every side - Zoran and Kecman the Serbs, Manjina and Miljenko the Croats and Fiko and Cenga the Muslims. The main plot is that in the café soon needs to arrive a secret package which is so important that it's the reason for the war, so whoever possess that thing will be one step ahead of everybody (irronicaly, it was never revealed what it was). So, all three sides are racing to discover what is it, when will it come, and who is going to bring it. The humor is great, because it's mocking the relationship between all three sides. It also mocks Serbian life and those around them, their speech, their religion...I think that the jokes can be understood even by someone who isn't Serb, which is a rarity for Serbian shows. The main flaw is the number of episodes. Only six of'em? Damn! Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted!

A sitcom with a 'plot' that goes nowhere and has no importance. Boring characters engaging in the same boring dialogue, episode after episode. Also, I didn't care about Bosnia when it was released. I had had enough of it by 1995. The people who made it were from Bosnia and assumed people in Belgrade would relate to it the same way someone from Bosnia would. I sure didn't. I needed a comedy that would speak to me, a Belgrade child, not to immigrants from Bosnia. Intricacies of ethnic conflict in Herzegovina never interested me.

Not to mention that, possibly out of fear of coming across as biased in favour of the Serbian side, the writers made sure Serbian characters were the least intelligent and least appealing. There are two feeble-minded Serbian characters, vs. One muslim and zero Croatian ones. All three major Croatian characters are fairly intelligent, though somewhat laughable, but in a sympathetic way. Main Serbian characters are a paranoid primitive from the woods, who isn't very bright, and some guy who looks like a drug addict and listens to songs about drug addiction. Main muslim characters are shifty, but intelligent. On the whole, the Serbian side has no genuinely smart or likeable characters. They are either complete imbeciles or primitives who come either from some God forsaken forest or from a drug dealing gang in Belgrade.