Reviews

It is sickening to see white westerners, "explore" other people's of this world as if they are at a zoo, while they take beautiful pictures and documentaries they get paid for, and stroke their own pathetic egos.

When it comes to entitlement of the nature and animals, I can take it. Fine. Just have "advanced" westerners filming parts of the world that doesn't belong to them and sell me the content.

But in some episodes here, you are actually in other people's lands, homes and in their real lives. It is painful and surreal, seeing a wealthy white man pointing his camera at people with endlessly longer heritages and fuller cultures, or people with miserably poor conditions, while he finds it exciting or enjoys the technical aspects of his photography. If you don't see the dehumanisation in this program, a part of your soul is missing.

Non westerners, the majority of planet earth, should stop being so good hearted and charmingly welcoming to the white man with the camera at some point. Unfortunately they don't have our perspective from the West, and they don't know about the subconscious/conscious smugness, and the exploitation behind the camera.

Even more sickening when they pretend they are holier than thou and that they are accomplishing something for these objectified humans.... How much of your pay checks did those poor slum children actually get?? You know, the ones who are the entire content of your "work"??

No matter how beautiful the scenery or cinematography, despite my actual curiosity of the world we live in, I couldn't stomach the whole series. The cringe wasn't worth it.

I enjoyed actually listening to the man himself talk, but the rest of this "documentary" was filled with absolut garbage.

Irrelevant graphics and archive clips every two minutes, even in the middle of the sequences where lazar is being interviewed, looong scenes where the producer is just sitting on his ass talking to Knapp on the phone, over the top music not at all befitting the content, "deep" narration about the nature of reality with Rourkes voice that is longer than the actual interview clips, and on an on until I got a head ache.

It was obvious they just wanted to prolong the run time, and make it dramatic and appealing to morons (reflection of the filmmakers own intelligence?)

Why make me watch you sit there on your speaker phone, saying to Knapp you called nine scientists, instead of actually recording interviews with those scientists ???

If you want to be taken seriously, then make a professional documentary, Ask better questions, travel and find more relevant people instead of just speaking on the phone, don't edit like a five year old boy who likes cartoons, and get some proper lighting and sound equipment.

Season one is one of the best shows I have seen in a very long time. The characters are so very well developed and human. Their interactions are something you don't get tired of despite of watching several hours in one sitting. The storyline that spans through the whole season is brilliant.

Couldn't really keep watching after the actors changed and didn't find second seasons first few episodes as intelligent. Stopped watching.

So 10 stars for S1!

First half:

A slowly unravelling mystery around a rich art dealers death seen through his widows eyes. Very enticing plot development and pace, great settings, outfits, direction, editing etc.

Second half:

A bit of a mess that never recovers. Im not sure if all the episodes where written by the same people and didn't bother to check. But the second half of the series was seriously lacking in all above mentioned areas, except setting and outfits which didn't change. Not much made sense, and the quality of the whole show plummeted to a cable channel daytime soap opera level.

Watch it if you have nothing to kill some time with, or leave it on in the background while you make use of your time otherwise. Don't expect any brilliant twists or a great ending.

Other reviews have pointed out the shallow stiff acting and the seriously unrealistic bits in this show.

So I will focus on this:

In an effort to send a massage against the dated social norms that have been inflicted on women since childhood, this show swings so hard it misses and ends up on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Women have traditionally been taught to be nice, caring towards others and sacrificing of self interests, not bossy or intrusive and so on. This show tries to portray a woman that goes against all this, does her own thing and shows everyone she can be however she wants and succeed in life. Sounds like a great premise, right? NO

Instead, this plot glorifies a very immature, self centered, entitled, not so savvy girl with zero respect for anything or anyone around her including the law.

The writers brainstorming: *Women shouldn't be forced to be timid and nice, so lets just make our protagonist an absolute jerk who treats her boyfriend and other caring people around her like trash.

*Women should be able to choose any career they want so lets pretend selling cloths on ebay with no business plan, no networking, no starting up help from someone more experienced (her dad?!), look like its a genius move. On top of that she misses deliveries because she gets drunk but hey, that's OK because she is very cool because she watches OC and throws tantrums when things don't go her way.

*Women shouldn't be forced to act a certain way, so lets make her act like a man, not a normal one either, but the absolute worst type of man pig.

I could go on. But I wont. I will only say this. I seriously hope no young woman sees this as inspiration on empowered women. If you fool a girl into believing that disregarding EVERYTHING in a society, close relationships and the obvious rules of business is a good thing, you will never have strong successful women.

So in a way this show tried so hard, it made itself anti-feminist.

PS. And yes, they threw in the token black guy and the token gay guy too, but didn't bother to even give them semi believable parts in the story. Just awful.

....or the result of a bet, to make the worst thing ever made in the history of anything ever recorded by a camera.

The good reviews on here are so funny I actually laughed myself to a little tear. Or they could be sarcastic in which case they are brilliant.

Needless to say I did not watch this eye-rape till the end.