As I was searching for series to watch last week after completing another season of other series, I remembered wanting to see this new one that started in 2019 itself. So yeah it is pretty new. It was shown in SyFy but not their usual science fiction/supernatural series. The premise was interesting for me and I just had to give this a try. Well we should start now to find out what it was all about.
Brief Story Line
Set in the year 1980s, a homeless kid named Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth - Dad Vs Lad TV series) who had a notorious reputation was somehow recruited to join an underground academy called King's Dominion. This academy was a place to learn various skills for assassination or killing such as martial arts, the art of poisoning and so on. The students came from various backgrounds such as daughter of Yakuza leader Saya Kuroki (Lana Condor - To All The Boys I've Loved Before etc), a young gang leader Willie (Luke Tennie), the son of an abusive cop Billy (Liam James - The Killing TV series etc), son of a Mexican cartel leader Chico (Michel Duval) and his girlfriend Maria (María Gabriela de Faría).
Marcus was "found" by the principal with mysterious background Master Lin (Benedict Wong - Doctor Strange etc) who thought he would be a great addition to the academy. However, with so much violence not to mention the many gangs in the academy, Marcus was having trouble to fit in, especially since he was not affiliated to any of those groups. So what would happen to Marcus? Why was he recruited? And what was the real background of this academy? You could understand it better after finishing the first season.
End of Brief Story Line
Well gotta admit, this is a really different type of series. When I started to watch the pilot, it had a really intriguing few minutes opening and the introduction of the school/academy was really great. We were shown many interesting moments involving our main lead Marcus with the various people in the academy. What really amazed me in the first episode was the assignment the students received, which had a great impact on the story line in the future and definitely made me decide to continue watching.
In the following episodes, the focus of the series seemed to be on Marcus learning how to adapt with his new environment. It was quite fun looking at the kids learning all those various unusual curriculum and some of the characters were also enjoyable to watch. There were quite a lot of other students who gave recurring appearance and added amusing and interesting moments as well. Such as the gothic girl Petra (Taylor Hickson), the British fun guy Lex (Jack Gillet), the racist girl Brandy (Siobhan Williams) and the Russian narcissist guy Viktor (Sean Depner). But the most impressive recurring character was definitely Chester who was played greatly by Tom Stevens (Wayward Pines TV series).
The main cast were generally OK and I thought got some nice chemistry. I liked Marcus character and my favorite was definitely Saya, while my least favorite was Maria. Not because the actress did not perform well enough, but it was because her character was a bit annoying to me personally. Oh and I also like Benedict Wong's portrayal as Master Lin with his real harsh treatment but at the same time protective towards the students.
What I enjoyed from this series was the fight choreography which was done impressively. I was in awe with some of the nice movements done by them. Despite majority of the cast were teenagers, the story was not focusing on the love story like the typical high school series, although there was some love story angle a bit. The series was filled with a lot of violence, few drug abuse scene and quite a lot of loud (metal) music from the 80s (one lovely song that I liked appeared in one of the episodes). Another quite interesting part was some scenes were shown in animated form, giving a sense that it was taken from the comic books. Yes, this was indeed adapted from graphic novel comics of the same title created by Wesley Craig and Rick Remender (who also served as co-producer for the series). Somehow I felt that this series was stylish and most likely enjoyable for fans of the comics, but probably a little bit market specific. It had a sense of uniqueness and based on what I had seen so far, it was certainly good enough, though general audience might need some open mind to like it.
Of all the 10 episodes in the first season, I felt that majority were quite entertaining. Even the 5th episode where I was a bit annoyed with some of the scenes, but it was still amusing. I also quite enjoyed 8th episode which gave some nice surprises as well as funny moment. But the most favorite episodes of mine would have to be the 9th and season finale which were full of actions and surprising moments. The ending though, was totally irritating as it left so much things that I could not wait to see in the second season (that is if we really do get it which I hope we would, otherwise it would be very sad for us who had invested our time into this). By the time I write this post, there is still no confirmation of its renewal.
Overall, I had mostly enjoyable moment watching this series. It had its ups and downs but mostly interesting enough to keep me going. It was a bit dark and the amount of violence (and drug abuse moments) might not be to everyone's liking. But for people looking for a bit dark-ish series focusing on teenagers learning how to become assassins or gang leaders or just for them to grow some balls in an underground academy set in the 80s with those vintage settings and music from that time, then you can give this one a try. It might surprise you. However, if you do not fancy those qualities, then better look for something else. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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