UNBELIEVABLE (2019)

Creators: Susannah Grant, Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman

Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Toni Collette, Merritt Wever 

The true story of Marie, a teenager accused of lying about being raped, and the investigation by two detectives.

Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever) on the worst day of her life, speaking to the police after being raped early that morning. As she slept someone was on top of her tied her up and raped her for 4 hours. But the police thinks that she might making this up. They make her tell her story over and over and over again to different branches of the investigation. So the details gets blurry and the detectives now began to see that this does not add up. It’s revealed that Marie comes from a tragic background of abuse which may cause her to make up a story here for attention. Her friends and family does not now how to help her which Marie is now to believe that she is lying. She is forced to make a false confession . At first I thought ok not too bad for a series but when you see the second hour there is a new case in a different town an other woman has been rape for hours. The responding officer in this situation is an empathetic woman named Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) and paid attention of her tone of her voice is to makes the victim comfortable. It is a good way to handle the investigation. The victim will remember more and there are no pressure . Later Duvall’s investigation is going to bring a detective woman named Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette), who is a different character that Karen. The two are going to pull together and share their investigation because they are to believe they now have a serial rapist on their hands.

The series takes us on this investigation where as a team they were able to close in on the rapist. It is grueling  hours of investigation and research. The series is a slow pace burner but you can help to watch an other episode right away. Terrific series that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

CHERNOBYL (2019)

Creator: Craig Mazin

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård 

One of the world’s worst man-made catastrophes happened on April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Union.

An excellent US series  where sacrifices was made and men have suffered a great deal. It is an hommage to those people who died in the explosion and those who fought to keep it from spreading and contained it. And what a bunch of brave men they were. Well made and filmed with the  great performances from Jared Harris, Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, and more. What happened on April 26, 1986 when a safety test went extremely  wrong. They are the workers that are most inexperience with no proper equipment to work with combined with the abusive supervisors who didn’t know what they were doing and the disaster that is going to follow is going to be so intense that they are not going to believe their eyes. Harris Played by Valery Legasov, a key Soviet nuclear physicist who is the first to realize what has happened at Chernobyl, and what it means is going to happen now. The series capture what happen after the incident and how they are going to contain it and clean up this mess. What killed me it that the Soviet government saw it happened claimed nothing was wrong. You have got to be kidding me. After the meltdown, there were several ticking time bombs related to Chernobyl, including the even of a massive explosion, the containment of the nuclear radiation leaking across Russia, and the fact that it was headed down into the water supply for most of the country. How was this avoided it is simple it is called human sacrifice. People who were willing or were ordered to contain this mess and clean it up. It is an all star cast here that delivers an outstanding performances. Here is a bit of news the Soviet Union where the city was evacuated because of radiation of which the military told them they could go back later is now a ghost town but wait there is more now that the radiation is low somewhat in some places ,the government have decided to make it a tourist attraction. You have got to be kidding me. So they decided to make money out of it and what killed me, is that the tourists are coming. They are strict rules and if the tourists does not obey them and have too much radiation on them they are fined 1000 Euros. A terrific series from HBO were I salute the men who sacrificed their lives for others to live.

Tourist attraction

 

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY

Happy 4th of July to all my American friends and American bloggers. BBQ time with Beer, a lots of beers. 

WHEN THEY SEE US (2019)

Cast: Asante Blackk, Caleel Harris, Ethan Herisse 

The true story of five teenagers who are accused of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989. The thing is they did not commit the crime.

1989 five boys as forever known as the Central Park Five when they were put on trial for a crime they did not commit. Coerced confessions that didn’t even have consistent details of the crime, the press and the prosecutors in New York City convicted Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Jr., Korey Wise and Kevin Richardson, sentencing them to years of prison . While the NYPD harassed and terrorized these minors, the actual criminal walked unseen through Central Park. The story has been told as the documentary The Central Par five. When They See Us uses a four-episode Netflix miniseries, starting with the events of April 19, 1989, when investment banker Trisha Melli was brutally raped and left for dead in the North Woods of Central Park and ending in 2002 when an inmate confessed to the crime. Some scenes are horrifying, harrowing, upsetting and infuriating. To think that the police has done their job and still today they think they did their job is unbelievable. The series never loses sight of its thesis statement that Black and black people are presumed guilty at all times. The series is not going to let you forget how the justice system and the press have failed even today nothing is changed. The system failed those kids. You will see how the interrogation was coerced then the trial. The last episode unleashes the full horror of both prison life and the assault on Melli. The NYPD was tormenting the Central Park Five, the real rapist was walking  through the park covered in blood and free to commit a few more attacks before being captured. A Horrific and hard to watch series. Sadly it is still going on today.

 

 

SEX EDUCATION (2019- )

Creator: Laurie Nunn

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Ncuti Gatwa 

A sexually repressed teenage son of a sex therapist decides to start giving out some counseling of his own to his fellow high-schoolers?

Here is a Netflix series that is getting better as the episode goes along. Otis Millburn (Asa Butterfield) our hero here is a sexually repressed teenager who’s mom is a sex therapist that is also sleeping with her patients and whom ever she wants. But the thing is that Otis here is afraid of sexually intimacy and has wet dreams. As the episodes goes along you are going to know why. It started when a compadre who has a problem with his Penis, Otis will talk him down and make him understand what he is suppose to do. Of course put a gay man who is being bullied and his father can’t believe that his son is gay, a teenager girl who Otis likes and wants her to be his girlfriend but she is interested in someone else and a bunch of other dysfunctional teenagers and you will have a series that is funny as hell. The high school students here are facing  different problems the typical problem that a teenager is facing sex, contraception , pregnancy, masturbation, as well as psychological problem of being bullied because someone is gay, well you get the point. You will never get bored with this one.   I can’t wait until next season.

ULTRAVIOLET (2017- )

Creator: wendy west

Cast: Viet Anh Do, Karolina Chapko, Paulina Chapko 

A thirty-year-old woman (Ola Serafin)  leaves her husband and London, return to her hometown of Lódz, Poland. While driving her car one night, she witnesses a dramatic incident which looks like suicide, but which she finds suspicious. The police seems not too care about the incident, they thinks it is suicide anyway. Desperate, Ola looks for help on the Internet, where she finds a group of amateur detectives that solve criminal cases the police are unable to called ultraviolet.

Here is a cool cool little series that is worth to look an original Netflix series. When Ola (Marta Nieradkiewicz) returns to poland she gets a jobs kind like Uber. One night driving home she witness an accident that looks like an suicide but Ola is not convinced that it is suicide. Frustrated with the police who is indifferent about the incident goes home and search the internet for help finds a group of people who can help under the name of Ultraviolet that solve cases where the police is having trouble closing the case. Funny thing there’s a really imaginative use of technology throughout these cases to make them both interesting and intriguing. 45 minutes episodes to find out who is the murder. Later as the series progress Ola makes friend with a police detective and that is going to become handy for her and the gang of ultraviolet. Olga here is enthusiastic and it seems that she leads the gang all together. The police investigation are simple with some interesting murder but sometimes it is a bit predictable but at least enjoyable. The cast is awesome and the chemistry is there with humour in play. Ola is still obsessing over her brother’s death and blames her former sister-in-law for that. The series is inspired by the book The Skeleton Crew written by Deborah Halber and by the personal story of Wendy West.

DOGS OF BERLIN (2018)

Creator: Christian Alvart

Cast: Felix Kramer, Fahri Yardim, Samy Abdel Fattah

A murder of a soccer player forces two disparate detectives into a battle with the Berlin underworld and a confrontation with their own corruption.

The best player Orkan Erdem in the German national football team, is murdered in Berlin. Kurt Grimmer who is married but is with his lover nearby decided to check it out. As soon as he finds out who the body is, and suddenly the lights when on in his head. He thinks that the German national team, deprived of their best player, will lose the match, so he calls his bookie and decide to make a bet. Of course he tells the two cops that found the body to stay put until he comes back. He has to convince the coaches of the team to keep it a secret until the end of the match. In the mix there will be Neo-Nazis, Germans, Turks, Serbs, Arabs, mafia and gangs that are mixed in this business as well. Yes there are the crooked cops that are going to come along with racism, spouse cheating, mafia business etc…. You are going to have to follow very carefully this series it has a few twist and turns. it is moving as it should be at a fast paced in a form of a thriller. Yes it is a German Netflix original series.

IL MIRACOLO (2018 – )

Creator: Niccolò Ammaniti

Cast: Guido Caprino, Elena Lietti, Lorenza Indovina

English title: The miracle

During the incursion in a mob boss’ hideout the police finds out a statue of the virgin Mary weeping Blood. A team of scientific investigate in secret. General Votta (Sergio Albelli) calls then the prime minister Fabrizio Pietromarchi (Guido Caprino) who is in a middle of a crisis in public and in his private life. If this gets out what will happen? Are people going to go nuts about this?

Ok then here is a subject that is not talk about too much but here Ammaniti created an environment of faith and the miracle. It is a question of your faith here and do you believe in miracle? Political men, priest, criminal all sort of people are going to know the existence of this statue. A priest who seeks hooker to relieve himself plus gamble among other sins is call by the prime minister to see what he makes of it but he can’t tell nobody. the second story is the one with the prime minister and his family with the weird babysitter and his wife and kids where they are having some kind of crisis. The third story is about this boy who has autism comes back with a dead girl who is his friend but everyone thinks he killed her but do not have no proof. The 4th story is the dying mother of this woman who works with the scientific group on why the statue weeps blood 9 liters per hour. It is the lives of those people in the space of 8 days in 8 episodes. A terrific series which is going to question your faith with some complex character.

COUNTERPART (2017 – )

Creator: Justin Marks

Cast: J.K. Simmons, Olivia Williams, Harry Lloyd  

Howard Silk, a modest employee, discovers in spite of himself that the agency for which he works is only a facade. When the existence of a portal, leading to a parallel dimension, with another version of itself, is revealed to him, a new and dangerous world opens up to him. He still does not know how much his life will be turned upside down…

Here is a series that is worth looking at. Counterpart here is a mystery / Thriller / espionage And a cold war fell to it. Of course there is the cat and the mouse game no surprise there and danger at every corner and the fact that the characters does not know who to trust. It has a sci-fi feel to it that makes it a little jewel of a series. You will be hooked as soon as you see the first episode. It is interesting because you will see two world different from each other. And what is their supposedly double are doing on the other side? .K. Simmons (Whiplash, Spiderman) is brilliant in both version and so is the ensemble cast. It is taking place in Berlin but I don’t know if it is shot really there. PLus the actors plays a different role in a different setting, it is nice to see how talented they are. Counterpart is an Original idea that works well and intelligently written. Trust me you will not be disappointed in the climatic season finale nor the second season.

1983 (2018 – )

Creator: Joshua Long

Cast:Robert Wieckiewicz, Maciej Musial, Michalina Olszanska

Decades after a 1983 terrorist attack, a law student and a cop uncover a conspiracy.

In 1983 Warsaw, a man is beating another man who is in the Solidarity resistance movement in Poland. He goes outside after leaving the man halfway dead. He sees a medical transport van, notices the dripping paint on it, then is killed in a massive explosion. And here is are opening shot on this perfectly writing Polish series, in a Neo-Noir fashion. Then it is 2003 on our next shot the movement was derailed by these terrorist attacks and now Poland is  under a Soviet-backed regime, where protest is punished severely.

Anatol Janow (Robert Więckiewicz) is a police detective who used to work on high-profile cases, but has been demoted to this division that he is in.  He’s called to the apartment of a known resistance operative, who looks like he killed himself his partners called it a suicide but Janow know better than that someone has killed this man to look like a suicide. The second part of the story is this law student Kajetan Skowron (Maciej Musiał), whose parents died in the 1983 attacks, is given a case file by a judge, the murder of someone the judge knew before the attacks. Somehow Skowron meets Janow who looks into the dossier and uncovers a conspiracy that the government wants to shut down.

This well writing series feels like an espionage as we meet the some of the people of the resistance. The set design is feels like a Neo-noir film , reflecting the idea of an Eastern European dictatorship. It is an unexpected jewel from Netflix with complex characters and the story is intelligently told but I think that most people will overlook this one my advice do not miss it.