(Mini Series) Who is Erin Carter? - A Fairly Entertaining Action Thriller Mystery Series

I was not too excited to watch this series when it was released a week ago. But after it made to the top 10 soon enough, I became interested and decided to give it a try few days ago. OK, so let's find out more about the series then.

Brief Story Line

Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad - Snabba Cash TV series etc) had moved to Barcelona from England with her daughter Harper (Indica Watson - A Boy Called Christmas etc) few years before. Now she worked as subsitute teacher at a prestigious school and best friends with one of the school staff Olivia (Susannah Fielding - This Time with Alan  Partridge TV series etc). She also got married to a male nurse named Jordi (Sean Teale - The Gifted TV series etc) and living in a rich neighborhood where one of their neighbors Penelope (Charlotte Vega - Wrong Turn etc) always looked down on Erin.

However, Erin's life started to fall apart when she and Harper experienced a gun robbery in a supermarket. After the incident, Erin's unknown past started to catch up with her. Things got further complicated when a mysterious woman in England, later revealed to be Lena (Denise Gough - The Kid Who Would be King etc) came into the picture.

So who is Erin Carter? You could find them all in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

All right, got to admit that this one was probably better than I expected earlier, especially after a not so convincing first episode. Although there was a bit of intense moment in the supermarket plus the appearance of a person who seemed to know Erin's actual background, I personally felt the intensity was a bit lacking. Like there was no real urgency or fast enough pace.

However, it did raise enough curiosity for me to continue and see how it would turn out. When I reached second episode, I thought OK, now we are getting somewhere. The pace was faster and the problems that Erin encountered were getting bigger and more chaotic. It was like everything she did resulted to larger issues and more dangerous. And once I reached the third episode, the series really blew up which made it a lot more exciting. From that moment on, it also became more suspenseful and interesting as we got to know who Erin really was. 

The suspense was felt throughout the rest of the series, although there was a bit of feeling that everything was resolved quite easily. The ending was a bit predictable to me, including that one twist which should have been shocking but was unintentionally shown by Netflix. I think Netflix should filter out their way of showing a cut scene of the episodes in the menu option because it sometimes showed a scene which we should not have known until we reached it. And this was one of such example.

I tried to see whether this series was based on anything in the opening and closing credits but could not find it. Having read more on the series on the internet, it turned out that it was purely based on fiction created by Jack Lothian whose prior experience mostly wrote for TV series. So credit has to be given for his ability to write this one. The cast were generally pretty decent, not briliant enough but not awful either. I have never seen Evin Ahmad before but she was quite convincing as the mysterious Erin Carter, with some OK fight scenes even though not too spectacular. 

Aside from the above cast, there were also others who were part of the series regular, i.e. Jordi's best friend, Emilio (Pep Ambros) and the father of one of Erin's student Daniel Lang (Douglas Henshall - Primeval TV series etc). One of the most surprising cast to me was Yayan Ruhian, the Indonesian actor who had brief appearances in John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and few other Hollywood films. Although it was kind of disappointing that he did not even had any dialogues and his fights were lousy here. Nevertheless, it did give him additional exposures to international audience.

Overall this was a series that did not have the brightest start but became more interesting as it progressed. The mystery of who the real Erin Carter was pretty intriguing, and it got some good old fun actions as well. What made me like this more was it was a limited series which meant everything would be resolved in the whole 7 episodes (yes it was that short with only 45-54 minutes duration). However, there was a scene before the very end that was a bit open and might be used as basis for second season in case they wanted to. But personally for me it was not necessary. So if you are wondering if it is worth the time to watch this, I think there is no harm in giving it a try. It is fairly entertaining as long as you do not expect an extraordinary wonderful action series.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars