I have known about this series for quite a long time and it was highly recommended by my brother in law. But as I was continuing other series that I was a bit behind, I only got the chance to see this last week. Before I started watching it, I followed his advice to watch the 2009 movie first just to get the hang of it and remind me of what the story was all about. OK, here goes.
Brief Synopsis
Set in the alternate reality of 2019, the police in Tulsa Oklahoma had to wear masks to avoid being targeted by white supremacist group called Seventh Kavalry. A detective named Angela Abar (Regina King - If Beale Street Could Talk, Seven Seconds TV series etc) was among those police and went by the name of Sister Night, while living with her husband Calvin (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II - Aquaman, Baywatch movie etc) posing as restaurant owner. Her other masked coworkers included Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson - Angel Has Fallen, Syriana etc) and few others under the supervision of chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson - Knives Out, Nash Bridges TV series etc).
When a new murder case emerged, Angela and other police had to find the culprit which seemed to involve an elderly guy (Louis Gosset Jr - An Officer and a Gentleman, Iron Eagle movies etc). Later the FBI also assigned their special agent Laurie Blake (Jean Smart - A Simple Favor, Samantha Who? TV series etc) to investigate on this case. Meanwhile there was also the appearance of a mysterious man (Jeremy Irons - Red Sparrow, Reversal of Fortune etc) living with his servants Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison - Sleepy Hollow TV series etc) and Ms. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) who was unclear of his relationship with what went on at Tulsa.
With so much at stake, Angela had to find what really happened before all hell break loose.
End of Brief Story Line
You know this was a really serious and dark series. It was a complex one with so many complicated characters involved which would definitely satisfy fans of a series that had such quality. I said above that I watched the original movie first before getting to this series and it turned out to be the intelligent move, cause the story here was set in the same universe and roughly 30 years after what happened there. That truly helped me understand the story better, which would not be the case had I not seen the movie first. There were some plots which related directly from the film's premise, including several characters who re-appear in here, albeit played by different persons (none of the original Watchmen actors/actresses appear in here).
Anyway I said that the story was really complex as there were so many characters who at first did not seem to matter but only after few episodes we got to understand the connections. One or two were really surprising and I felt that those surprises and twists were the highlight of this series. There were many things that truly blew my mind which was awesome. However there were few times that I also felt a bit bored with some long taking story telling (in the first few episodes). I started to be really excited when reaching the end of episode 5, and I particularly loved episodes 6, 7 and 8 which I thought were wonderful and fantastically done. Episode 8 felt like a totally genius way of story telling, plus there was a surprise post-end credit scene which should not be missed.
For a comic book series (Watchmen was published from DC comics) adaptation where most of the lead characters were not really taken from the comics itself, this one was pretty smart. This is not a conventional superhero series where good guys face bad guys, as some of the characters felt grey-ish. Some of the actors and actresses performed their roles admirably. Aside from some names I mentioned earlier, there was also a person who only appeared in the latter episodes but was equally important (played by Hong Chau - Downsizing etc).
Btw, there were not so much actions in here with emphasis mostly on the characters development and surprising twists. There were also few nudity scenes and a bit of love making scenes which made this more suitable for adults. Oh this series also felt heavy on the racism area, specifically against the colored people. I personally was entertained by certain aspects of the series like the plot and twists, but the others were sometimes a bit too heavy for me.
Overall the 9 episodes of this season felt just nice, it did not feel too draggy or too short. I read that the series creator Damon Lindelof (famous for being co-creator of Lost and Leftover TV series plus writer of Prometheus, Star Trek Into Darkness and several others), had left after 1 season. And this created uncertainty of subsequent seasons as HBO did not want to continue without him, making this season possibly end as a limited series. So if you are interested in series with such quality and if you happen to like Watchmen the movie, then you should definitely give this a try and you might like it as much as the critics and most audience as could be seen from the high critical and viewers rating.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment