Django

Actually, I awarded this series a total of eight stars but I chose to use white ones for the last six as an homage to art.

If world famous paintings like "Black Cat at Midnight in a Coal Bin" tickles your fancy then you'll not want to miss a riveting second of this attempt at art. For me, however, I don't think I should have to sit in a completely dark room and strain my eyes to watch a made for TV series.

Once again the choice to record in visible light (because, well, we can now) was chosen over allowing the audience the opportunity to actually be able to follow the story instead of needing to guess who that shadow actually is and what is he (or she) doing. I threw in the towel after, roughly, fifteen minutes of this and moved on to something else.

I barely watched more than half of the first episode for one very simple reason, that being, I couldn't see what was going on. The grading, brightness and contrast is so dark, even in sequences that are supposed to be under bright sunshine, you can't see what's going on. You can't see faces to tell what expression they have. You can't see buildings or their surroundings. You can't see anything. I'm watching on a 65" OLED and it's just a dark smear across the screen with a vague flickering of candlelight. It could be the greatest series ever filmed, but not being able to see what's actually going on in the scenes spoils any chance of enjoyment. Hard pass from me as a result.

Normally, I'd post a review against the last episode of the season unless I was sure that it's not going to be renewed, but I'm going to post this here as, even if "Django" is brought back for another run - which doesn't look likely - I don't think I'm going to be around for anymore if it. Not everything has to be sunshine and rainbows, but this is too long and too dour to recommend.

Having left his homestead to fight for the South in the Civil war, Django (Matthais Schoenaerts) returns home to find most of his family dead, he believes though that his daughter survived and begins to search for her. 8 years later he locates Sarah (Lisa Vicari), living with John Ellis (Nicholas Pinnock) who has founded a free city, New Babylon, on land gifted to him. However, Elizabeth Thurman (Noomi Rapace) wants the land returned to her family, and as a devoutly religious person, to see New Babylon wiped from the map.

So, I quite liked the look for the show, though for an Italian production they generally stayed away from the classic Spaghetti Western style heading to Romania for a grittier, muddier look. New Babylon is clearly filmed in an old mine. I didn't think performances were that bad, Rapace has rather a wayward accent, but we're still in the period of mass migration so it could perhaps be excused on those grounds.

It wasn't a fun watch though. I've never seen the film it's based on (Franco Nero does appear in this series) but the plot is very different from what I read on Wikipedia. This story was too long, it might have worked better as a 90-minute film but at ten hours there were too many half-done storylines and repeated plot points to keep me from drifting away every time I watched it. It's pretty grim stuff too, not that explicit, but with a prevailing sadness particularly if, like me, you guess a pivotal plot point before it comes to the fore.

Again, it's for this reason that I don't think I'd settle in for another series.

Not sure reviews focusing on the mishmash of accents really the point as I imagine accents would have been mongrel mix of immigrant ones back then. Not sure personal comments re Noomi Rapace were necessary either. I was unaware of previous versions so had no expectations but after 2 episodes felt this was trying too hard to have gravitas. The acting stilted with lots of pregnant pauses, knowing stares and as ever liberal use of flashbacks with most of the action in darkness presumably to avoid continuity issues and the need to dress sets.

So it passes the time while playing video games, as a bit too tedious to give full attention to. Hardly the searing new drama the ads proclaim.

Noomi rapace actually does suck in her role, what was she thinking?, absolute terrible 'accent', could she really not know this?, is she really this vacuous?, I guess!, many others have said the scenes are too dark, very true, in the dark scenes some of the cast cannot be seen, ?, the writer and the director are terrible, it's just not worthy of watching, kind of a fever dream, funny, the names of those involved in writing and directing seem to be Italian, is this a satire of the old spaghetti westerns?, is that it?, I just gave up in the middle of episode two, skip this disaster of a dumb show.