The Brink

"The Brink" is most certainly a political satire and not a comedy. The exaggeration and the ridicule is obvious from the start. But sadly not far from the truth...

It's about a fictional U.S. government which must deal with a foreign crisis. Its first season focuses on a crisis in Pakistan. The show was conceived that each season will follow a different crisis somewhere in the world with the same characters. (IF it gets a 2nd season that is!).

There are a few main characters. An alcoholic Secretary of State played by Tim Robbins, a lowly Foreign Service officer in Islamabad played by Jack Black and lots of other known comedic actors in various roles.

It is mildly funny because of these talents but if you go for the satire you might need a sharper bite. It seems like the creators went for some kind of Dr Strangelove type of thing, but fails short to deliver any real political messages.

Overall: Basically I would say "Meh!" but the cast is good so I will keep watching for now.

UPDATE (after watching the whole season): It gets better and 9th and 10th (season finale) episodes are GREAT! Highly Recommended!!

This is a great comedy series: wonderful cast, excellent setting, humanizing and hilarious ! It cracks jokes in all the right places. Great soundtrack. What is not to love?!

Tim Robbins, Jack Black and Jerry Weintraub brought this superb satirical series, created by Roberto and Kim Benabib, to the screen via HBO. It ran one season, was renewed, then suddenly cancelled because "they could not do it justice," which may mean that it was expensive. (Well, yes, there are a lot of planes.)

A "Dr Strangelove" for the new millennium, this pacey, dark political farce fairly rips across the screen. It's superbly written, beautifully cast, and artfully performed by everyone from its stars to its bit players (though I feel that Aasif Mandvi, Pablo Schreiber and Eric Ladin deserve special mention.)

I cannot recall ever laughing so hard at anything, or seeing Cabinet in-fighting illustrated so credibly and outrageously.

Now that we Americans have a President who could never have got the part via Central Casting, I fear that The Brink's apocalyptic take on politics and antics at the highest levels may be closer to the truth than we would ever want it to be.

When the End of Days is upon us, it'll be a shame that we won't be able to go out watching at least three seasons of The Brink. Boo to whoever made this decision, because this show is a classic and deserved better.

So weird i loved the first two episodes,, the minute i'v read the reviews i was so scared even to watch the pilot , but the series is way far from those bad reviews, The Series is organized, the plot is smooth and easily understandable and the dialog is fast in a tense intriguing way ... the screenplay seems to be strong and tightly written considering the shortage of experience of Kim Benabib and only with 14 episodes of Weeds written by Roberto Benabib the script turned out unexpectedly connected and catchy.

The script or let me be more general .. the story basically revolves around three characters; the naive careless low level state department employee Alex Talbot with his dream to be a CIA operative , Walter Larson who seems rational and thoughtful on the table but also a drinker sex-addict and mouth full of "bad" comments and finally Zeke Tilson the drug-addict fighter pilot who always needs the combination of money and drugs to keep himself sane on the Jets-Reg ... see all of those three have a mission to stop world war 3 from happening... in a funny but thrilling development of events the series looked really strong.

As for the cast, well the threesome of Jack Black, Tim Robbins and Pablo Schreiber works amazingly here in a dumb, sarcastic but dreamy funny way.

So Overall, the series really caught my attention in the those first two episode ,, it is a comedy based on fictional so i think people who say its full of Zionist propaganda should just chill out a bit and i do think it has a bit of "Veep" in it but i believe it is a good thing for the show, i mean who doesn't love Veep but now with a different story and different characters.

Clever, very, very funny, insightful, instructive and addictively entertaining. So, why did HBO not renew for a second season? Hmm. I wonder.