Anthracite

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.

The Ida character in the beginning does take some getting used to (she can come across as annoying in the first episode) but by the second / third episode the story and characters start to unravel.

A few good plot twists that were unexpected and keeps you guessing till the end.

Six episodes in length also ensures that the story / series is not drawn out with pointless plot fillers and dialogue.

Some negatives: some characters are annoying and some aspects of the plot are not fully explained or seem pointless.

The series delivers just enough to keep you invested. Good watch overall for fans of thriller mystery genre.

Small town mystery tropes include: (1) People holding onto secrets for a long time (2) Mythologies around unsolved crimes (3) Embarrassing or criminal relational connections (4) "Outsiders" who are more connected to the small town than they knew

Anthracite has all those tropes and more and was still a fun ride. Ida's quirkiness was fine but her French so fast at points that i needed to replay some of her scenes.

Surprisingly Jaro was bewildered to be the object of every woman's affection except his ex's. Was he that clueless?

But seriously, it was fun watching the mystery u fold and trying to figure out why people did what they did and if the characters we came to care about would get what they needed.

I recommend. And 6 episodes is the sweet spot! USA productions need to keep that in mind!

Anthracite: 1994, a murderous cult commit mass suicide in Levionna in the French Alps, the only survivor being the cult leader. 2024, a journalist who had covered the original story is apparently kidnapped, his web sleuth daughter goes to Levionna to investigate. Another body turns up, are the cult active again? This series involves many plot twists and may well be a tad too lever for it's own good. It's worthwhile sticking with Anthracite though, convoluted as the plot is it involves many interesting tropes. A pharmaceutical company which may be carrying out secret tests on the local populace, a possible serial killer responsible for many disappearances over the last ten years, strange abandoned coal mines which are being reopened by the pharmaceutical company. There are some soap like elements to the plot and who is whose father/mother brother/sister theme which makes you hear dueling banjos playing in the background. It has enough, tension and action to keep you interested as gory violent scenes accumulate plus a nurse who could give Nurse Ratchet a run for her money. Directed by Julius Berg, Written by Fanny Robert, Maxime Berthemy, Sophie Lebarbier, Mehdi Ouahab. Six episodes in Netflix. 7.5/10.

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.