Static Age #14: Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991)

This Static Age’s spotlight goes to Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991), the series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch that lasted two seasons. The first season consists of 8 episodes and the second of 22, and they concern the mysterious murder of a teenage girl in Small-town, U.S.A. and the attempts of the local police to solve the case amidst a backdrop that is so weird that makes everything more complicated. There are enough moments of cinematic brilliance here, as well as a tone of wonderful dread, to justify the many people that are obsessed with this show. Also starring David Duchovny (in drag), Don Davis, Billy Zane, the great Russ Tamblyn, and David Lynch himself.

 

And now, let’s switch our focus towards some recent series…

The Boys - Season 2 poster art

 

The 2^nd season of The Boys (2019 – present), created by Eric Kripke, is offering more action and gross comedy for the fans (or even haters) of superheroes. The series continue from where they had left us, with Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) missing and his team now essentially a bunch of fugitives, and with the other camp regaining power despite having lost a member of its team. The end result is edgy and the kind of television in which you see heads exploding and hands amputated; once upon a time we had to rely to the films of Lucio Fulci and David Cronenberg for such imagery but now it is part of the prime time mainstream. Thematically the series are a satire of not just the republicans and the Trump administration, but also so much more in general and hypocrisy in particular. Actually, this is so meta that the ‘terrorists’ are (kind of) the good guys and the ‘superheroes’ are (absolutely) the bad guys. Highly recommended intelligent fun (not for the whole family though).

 

The 1^st season of American Crime Story (2016 – present) is about the famous case of the double homicide attributed to O.J. Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and it is a perfect 10-episode journey to this fascinating true crime story. Featuring excellent and show-stealing performances from John Travolta as Robert Shapiro and David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, these series are a modern masterpiece. Absolutely the best courtroom drama since a certain Al Pacino classic.

 

The Alienist - Season 1 promotional art

Set in 19^th century New York, the 1^st season of The Alienist (2018 – 2020) is about a series of gruesome murders of underage transvestite prostitute boys, and the grouping of alienist (or what one would call a criminal psychologist today) Dr. Laszio Kreizier (Daniel Bruhl) and crime scene illustrator John Moore (Luke Evans), who will try to crack the bizarre case. Also starring Dakota Fanning in the mandatory feminist role and Michael Ironside, the series combines top-notch set and costume design with all-out horrors, and as such it is a winner. It is amazing to think that only three or four decades ago you could get to see such dark subject matter tackled only in edge exploitation films that were difficult to find whereas now it is readily available for streaming on Netflix.

 

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Season 4

I am very glad that the 4^th season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 – 2020) is also the last because by this stage the series have lost its steam. The titular witch (the always gorgeous Kiernan Shipka) will once again have to face Lovecraft’s Eldrich and teenage angst on her journey towards empowerment and self-awareness before the tired Netflix show concludes. The soundtrack is great and it includes Queen’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’, Billy Idol’s ‘Dancing with Myself’, Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child ‘O Mine’, and a little bit of ‘Down with the Sickness’ by the Disturbed; most of them may be covers from the on-screen band the Fright Club, they are still awesome.

 

Doctor Who - Season 7 art

The 7^th season of Doctor Who (2005 – present) is offering further adventures of the titular alien (returning Matt Smith) and his friendly couple Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill). In ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, the titular trashcan-like foes return and kidnap the heroic trio, while we are also introduced to the absolutely gorgeous Oswin (Jenna Coleman). ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’ is featuring – well! – dinosaurs on a spaceship, as well as robots. ‘A Town Called Mercy’ is an homage to Westworld (1973). ‘The Power of Three’ is about mysterious black cubes that invade earth and become part of humanity’s everyday life. ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ is another creepy episode featuring its titular entities. ‘The Snowmen’ is the episode in which Clara’s part (Jenna Coleman) becomes more prominent and a perfect sidekick for the good Doctor. ‘The Rings of Akhaten’ takes us to the titular planet where a weird religious ceremony is about to unfold, which is the case here on Earth as well, I would like to add. ‘Cold War’ is set during the – you guessed it! – Cold War, and finds the Doctor and Clara on a Russian submarine where a Martian warrior monster is also abroad. In ‘Hide’, Clara and the Doctor meet a very similar couple to them, albeit one that is searching ghosts, this time in a haunted mansion. ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ has Clara lost inside the iconic spaceship, where she is confused by the Doctor’s past. ‘The Crimson Horror’ employs visuals that look like 16mm film (and could well not be for all I know and the illusion be the work of post-production) in order to take us back in time, but the coverage shots don’t not match the era, a very common mistake among modern filmmakers. ‘The Name of the Doctor’ includes the answers to the mystery behind Clara’s own nature.

 

Also, please allow me to speak a word or two about some recent mainstream films…

 

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Director Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) is set in – you guessed it – the 1980s and focused on Donald Trump-like businessman and con artist Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) who takes the powers of an ancient wishing stone. By granting wishes left, right, and center, not to mention his own greedy capitalist ones for professional success, he of course creates chaos and misery. The titular superhero (played again by the talentless Gal Gadot) steps in to save the day, but the super-villain now has an ally in the form of The Cheetah (Kristen Wiig), another predictable outcast that turned her anger into evilness (you can tell what will happen next from miles away, every page of the script is so by-the-numbers and uninspired). If you’re looking for unethical neoliberal propaganda that is preaching that the world is a beautiful place and you should not wish for change because you may lose what you already have, then this movie should be perfectly spoon-fed to you; but if you have even a little bit of humanity left in you, you should absolutely denounce this corrupt piece of shit. Either way, at two and a half hours this excrement is desperately boring. As a choice, 1984 should not surprise you, as this is a case study on how to perform Orwell in real life (conservatives know that 1984 is supposed to be fiction, right?).

 

Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula

Train to Busan Presents...

(2020) is the sequel to the 2016 ‘zombies on a train’ epic, and is about a bunch of people that have nothing to lose and accept an offer from some seedy gangsters to go on a mission in the zombie-infected city of Peninsula, grab a few million dollars and come back rich. As difficult as the original plan was, everything goes to hell and the situation becomes much worse. Written by Sang-ho Yeon (who also directed) and Ryu Yong-jae, this may not be this year’s most original horror, it is however a very well-calculated work that keeps you excited throughout its 2-hour running time, and as such it should not be missed.

 

And finally, this past couple of months my bookshelf had a preference towards fiction (a rare occurrence, as I’m mostly into film books or true crime, etc.) and I tackled the following…

 

Stephen King’s The Bachman Books (2012, Hodder), a 978 pages tome that collects The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982), three books that the horror legend penned under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, bored me to tears and failed to captivate me.

 

Stephen King’s 1325 pages epic The Stand (1978, 2011, Hodder) is about an epidemic and therefore the most appropriate thriller I could read during the current Covid-19 worldwide crisis. Believed by most of his fans to be King’s best novel, it comes complete with references to American International programmers and Charles Band quickies.

 

Stephen King’s ‘chilling classic’ The Dead Zone (1979, 2011, Hodder) is about a man’s charisma and curse that enables him to see people’s past and future upon touching them. At 595 pages long it is considerably shorter from the author’s previous opus, albeit still of epic proportions. However, I think the movie was better.

 

‘The first collection of short stories by Stephen King’, Night Shift (1976, 1977, 1978, 2019, Κλειδάριθμος) is by far the author’s most engaging book as the short story format fits his terrors like a globe. An eerie compilation of 20 masterworks, this book reignited my interest for the author.

 

In the non-fiction front, I had the pleasure of reading Jimmy McDonough’s massive and stunning The Ghastly One: The 42^nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan (2019, FAB Press), which took me on a breathtaking journey of 1960s and 1970s underground that included everything, from drugs to group sex and from suicides to prostitution, all in the beautiful backdrop of filthy theater and cinema. When it comes to New York, I say Andy Warhol my ass – Andy Milligan was the real deal; a true misanthrope and a great artist. This edition came with a bonus book called Andy Milligan’s Scripts, which I am sure you guessed what it contains.

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Static Age #9: Ultra Q (1965 – 1966) [Complete Series 01]

Ultra Q (1965 - 1966) [Complete Series 01] BD box art.

This Static Age is focusing on Ultra Q (1965 – 1966), ‘The classic series that launched the Ultraman franchise’ as per the back cover of Mill Creek Entertainment’s excellent Region A Blu-ray box-set [Complete Series 01], which contains of all 28 episodes in their original Japanese language (DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0) with optional English subtitles and a stunning 1080p High-Definition 1.33:1 transfer. The set also comes with a gorgeous booklet that is featuring the ‘Tsuburaya: A History’ article which is an excellent introductory piece to the series, and several guides (episode, monster, character, and technology).

Toho Studios alumni Eiji Tsuburaya, one of the legends behind celluloid monsters such as Godzilla and Mothra, jumped into the small screen in order to create a mystery/sci-fi series, but the networks to which he sold the production while still in developing stages demanded for monsters and finally monsters he did deliver. This was the most expensive Japanese television series up to that point, and it spawned spin-offs (more than any other series in the history of the medium) and merchandize that is still celebrated to this day.

‘Defeat Gomess’ is about the titular bipedal monster that unexpectedly comes out of an excavation site and is keen on destroying props and sets, until the flying monster Litra shows up and aims to stop it. ‘Goro and Goro’ takes place in Wild Monkey Research Institute which is located at the Amagi Mountains, where a mute worker accidentally feeds a monkey with some hormones that turn him into a gigantic monster and is quick to escape and visit the city in order to find his old pal. ‘The Gift from Space’ is about some Martian capsules that arrive on planet Earth and are mistaken from gifts, but they turn out to grow in spherical manner into some sort of eggs that give birth to a snail-like monster called Namegon. ‘Mammoth Flower’ tells the story of Juran, the flower that becomes gigantic and attacks the city of Tokyo, while the army wants to destroy it and the scientists to study it. ‘Peguila is Here!’ is about the titular monster and its dirty deeds in Antarctica. The comedic ‘Grow Up! Little Turtle’ is about a schoolboy that dreams of its pet turtle becoming big enough to carry him on its back; when he is kidnapped by armed bank robbers, the pet turtle does indeed grow large and saves him from the criminals. In ‘S.O.S. Mount Fuji’ the titular volcano erupts and gives new life to the monster Gorgos. In aptly titled ‘Terror of the Sweet Honey’ a group of scientists invent a special honey, the side effect of which is gigantism; when it falls on the hands of the wrong person, he uses it in order to create the Mongula monster. ‘Baron Spider’ is an awesome episode about gigantic spiders. ‘The Underground Super Express Goes West’ is about the titular new train, in which Ippei mistakes his suitcase with one that contains the M1 substance, which of course turns into a monster onboard. ‘Ballonga’ is a creature that materialized out of blob and it now feeds upon fuel and energy while threatening the streets of Tokyo. ‘I Saw a Bird’ is about – well, a bird, named Kuro, part of the Larugeus species, that turns gigantic. ‘Garadama’ is featuring one of the most awesome monsters in the series, that was spawned by two falling meteorites, no less. Peguila returns in ‘Tokyo Ice Age’, only to find the Haneda airport completely frozen, in the middle of the summer, which is probably due to the work of the nearby nuclear reactor. In the blatantly anti-capitalist ‘Kanegon’s Cocoon’, a kid that is always thinking about money (the root of all evil?) turns into the money-eating monster. Garamon Strikes Back in – ahem! – ‘Garamon Strikes Back’ in which a mysterious man in black straight out of classic noir films steals a Tilsonite sample from the Astrophysics Research Center labs, while a bunch of Garadamas are about to crash to earth. In ‘The 1/8 Project’, Yuriko enters the facilities of a size reduction science project in order to find an interesting story, but instead she becomes the experiment’s subject and turns into a small person; is there a way back? The spectacular ‘The Rainbow’s Egg’ episode is featuring the awesome Pagos monster. The – amusingly relevant to watch now – ‘Challenge from the Year 2020’ is about a series of disappearances initiated by a mysterious blob, that had been predicted by an equally mysterious book. ‘The Primordial Amphibian Ragon’  is about the titular Jill Man-like creature that may have something to do with the sinking of the Japanese archipelago.

And now, let’s switch our focus towards some recent shows…

Gotham (2014 - 2019) - Season 5

It’s all-out war in the 5^th season of creator Bruno Heller’s Gotham (2014 – 2019) as every arch villain and semi-good guys join forces or part ways against a variety of menaces that force everybody to arm themselves and their friends, or their enemies as well, or people that are both, in this tired final outing in the series. The set and costume design are top-notch (and the only time Gotham echoed Tim Burton’s excellent 1990s take on it), but the awful CGI hurt the end result a lot.

In the 3^rd season of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 – ongoing), the titular teenage witch (the alarmingly gorgeous Kiernan Shipka) is now the leader of hell (after inheriting the place from her father, the Dark Lord, in the previous season), but her newly found power is not enough to help her overcome a variety of mortal and immortal struggles such as school problems and competition from other demons and such. And if all that is not enough, somewhere along the middle of the season, a bunch of uninvited Pagan believers show up and threaten the existence of our beloved Satanists in this time and place. Created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the series are full of Satanism and feminism and other isms that make the world a better place, and as such it should be cherished.

Doctor Who (2005 - ongoing) - Season 3

The 3^rd season of Doctor Who (2005 – ongoing) finds the eponymous alien protagonist (the immensely sexy David Tennant) with a new sidekick in the form of medical student Martha Jones (the beautiful Freema Agyeman), and together they will fight all sorts of monstrous menaces and the Daleks, of course. In ‘The Shakespeare Code’ the leading duo gets to meet the legendary British author (Dean Lennox Kelly), who turns out to be a womanizer. ‘Gridlock’ finds the leading duo against clawed space monsters that resemble crabs. ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ and ‘Evolution of the Daleks’ takes place in 1930s Depression era New York when the Daleks are involved with the construction of the Empire State Building; the episodic duo is also featuring some exceptionally stylish period stage dancing, led by the gorgeous Miranda Raison, as well as future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield in the role of Frank. ‘The Lazarus Experiment’ is a spectacular episode about the titular doctor (Mark Gatiss) who is using a de-aging machine that aside from making him younger also turns him into a spider-like monster underneath. ‘Human Nature’ and ‘The Family of Blood’ are two very interesting episodes about The Doctor goes back in time to 1913, where as a human he falls in love with a nurse (Jessica Hynes) while he also has to battle against a mob of scary-looking scarecrows. The season finale is quite amazing as well.

And finally, please allow me to speak a word or two about some recent mainstream films…

Rambo: Last Blood (2019) poster

Rambo: Last Blood (2019), directed by Andrian Grunberg, is following the last (as per the title) adventure of Rambo (Sylvester Stallone), which finds him in Mexico, looking for his kidnapped protégé girl (Yvette Monreal), whom the local drug cartels turned into a heroin-shooting junkie prostitute. Of course he manages to free the young woman (and killing a few johns in the process), but she soon dies in her arms. With the gangsters now looking for him, Rambo is transforming his secluded barn into a warzone field in which he will slaughter an army of Mexican baddies in many inventive ways. Boring at times, and exciting at others, and even occasionally racist, the white gunman that republican America loves has seen better days as this is the weakest opus in the franchise. It’s a pity though, as the pitch sounded promising.

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019), directed by Jake Kasdan, is yet another sequel in which the titular game (this time a video game, rather than the original’s board game) sucks in a bunch of players that are subjected to all sorts of comedic adventures in its jungle. Many stars are cast (Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black, as well as the leggy Karen Gillan) but the screenplay is too weak, resulting in a boring product. However, it went on to gross $790.9 million on a $132 million budget, so unfortunately we should expect more of the same.

Doctor Sleep (2019) poster

Doctor Sleep (2019), directed by one of the best directors of the last decade, Mike Flanagan (who also penned the screenplay, based on Stephen King’s novel), is following the adventures of the adult Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) who is trying to protect people that can do ‘The Shining’ from the immortal gypsies of ‘The True Knot’ that feed upon them. The extended version that I watched was 3 hours long, making it one of the longest horror movies ever (if not the longest). It is a bit of a problematic film, mainly because the villains are not that interesting and we do spend a lot of time with them seeing them talk to each other. However, thanks to the talents of Flanagan the scares are creepy enough to give you shivers.

Yet another mediocre entry in a franchise that is much too tired by this stage, director J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019) has some of the best CGI you are likely to see (and how could it not with such a mammoth budget?) but not much else, and the less said about it the better. Daisy Ridley is a doll, but she still can’t salvage the end result.

The Nightingale (2019) poster

Set in 1825 (and in the Tasmanian area in particular), writer/director Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale (2018) is a ‘rape and revenge’ art-house drama unlike anything you have seen before. The female lead, an Irish convict (the immensely beautiful Aisling Franciosi), is gang raped in front of her husband and baby child by a group of British soldiers (led by Sam Claflin) that then proceed to kill both her man and their baby, leaving her for dead as well. She then hires black man (Baykali Ganambarr) to guide her through the forest wilderness in order to track down the soldiers and extract revenge. Art horror at its best, both feminist and anti-racist, this epic (exceeding the 2 hour mark) is one of this year’s most important releases.

Director Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020), featuring a title that gives a certain Ray Dennis Steckler feature a run for its own, is another superhero film that takes the R-rated approach combining violence with inappropriate humor. The plot concerns – of course – Harley Quinn (the ever so beautiful Margot Robbie) who in order to save her life from the evil Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, looking great as a villain) agrees to find him a diamond that he lost. Featuring the best costume design I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie (the aforementioned female lead and male lead wear stunning rock star-like pieces), this essentially a chase movie that is suffering from a boring first half but gets redeemed by an exciting second one.

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Static Age #6

Frame from Planet of the Apes (1974)

Based upon the successful same-titled sci-fi movie series Planet of the Apes (1974), created by Anthony Wilson, consists of one season (14 episodes in total) and finds two astronauts landing in a futuristic version of planet Earth, where the apes rule it. Featuring guest performances by people such as Marc Singer and William Smith. It may be episodic (as most genre television was back in the 1970s) and quite formulaic (there is even an episode about horse race, promptly titled ‘The Horse Race’), but it delivers what the fans want, so you can’t really argue with that. With so many episodes focusing on the human protagonists trying to impress the apes (and even going as far as performing D.I.Y. surgery by simply following the advice of a medical book written by humans once upon a time ago), this is not really about humans and apes, but rather about politics, power, slavery, and methods of governance. Some of the politics though are a bit problematic, especially when some of the apes are portrayed to be as cruel as the Nazis via their questionable interrogation methods (see ‘The Interrogation’ episode). It all really comes down to the emetic theory that in the future, apes might run the planet, despite how much smarter and capable humans supposedly are (as per ‘The Cure’ episode).

And now, let’s talk a little bit about some recent shows…

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) poster art

Set in 1984, Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) is a young video game engineer who is programming the titular interactive video game in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018), based upon the same-titled book. And pretty much like the game and book themselves, on which you can choose your own adventure, so can the hero via the employment of reality-altering drugs and so can you at the touch of a button. Netflix’s first interactive movie takes you inside the action as you make decisions for the main characters (at some point you are somewhat jokingly involved as a controller of the script as well), but the algorithm does not exactly work. You will find yourself going back and forth, watching the same scenes again and again, not unlike in a not very well developed video game. I got bored making decisions every few minutes about things that don’t really matter (and essentially about an uninteresting story about schizophrenia) and lead to nowhere, and after spending a meaningless two hours of my life I quitted, which could well be because I never liked video games in the first place, and the film is the closest thing to one that you can get. Fans of this sort of thing may have a blast, but I hope Black Mirror (2011 – present) does not materialize another idea like this again.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Season 2

Feminism and Satanism go hand to hand on the 2^nd season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 – ongoing) in which we follow the adventures of the titular witch (Kiernan Shipka) as she grows up, changes her hair, and becomes a woman. It is a female empowerment story really, and for once the spells heard in the show are well researched rather than gibberish. Sabrina utters “I kneel before none”, the most liberating and empowering one-liner in the history of television. The soundtrack is again amazing and it includes The Sex Pistols’ ‘Submission’ and Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’. Small screen favorite, William B. Davis also shows up in a bit part.

Created by Alexander Cary and with Luc Besson credited as one of the executive producers, the 2^nd (and final) season of Taken (2017 – 2018), finds its male lead Bryan Mills (Clive Standen, a bit miscast), escaping from a Mexican prison where he was left off in the previous season’s finale, and upon returning to the U.S. he will commit himself to a variety of cases against hard criminals, the majority of them connected with the murder of his sister. The whole series are more enjoyable and captivating than they have any right to be. The ‘Absalom’ episode, in which the protagonist team tries to capture a trafficking ring of underage prostitutes, is particularly amazing.

The Deuce - Season 2

Pretty much like its predecessor, the 2^nd season of The Deuce (2017 – ongoing) is not so much about a story (sure, there is one, of sorts, about the Martino brothers – both played by James Franco – that try to make it in a seedy New York), but rather an era. Said era is the 1970s New York’s The Deuce and the evolution of pornography along with the several elements that went along with it, such as crime and prostitution. The streets were shoddy, the people were some characters indeed, the drugs were aplenty, everybody was smoking pretty much anywhere they wanted to, many bottles were opened and had their liquid poisons consumed, and there was nothing the cops could do about it. And guess what, this glamorous decadence with punk rock and disco music in its background seems much more romantic, honest, and fun, than what Disney has turned New York into these days. This is not nostalgia; it’s just a simple fact that even pimps are much more valuable members of society than tourist middle class pigs. Considering that I currently write a book about 1960s and 1970s, this series almost seem tailor-made for me, and it is actually my favorite show in the history of television. Also, it would have been way too easy to turn this into a gangster soap opera, but the producers opted against it; sure, mob was a big part of pretty much all businesses on 42^nd Street, but they were only a piece of the puzzle, that era had so many more colorful elements about it, and the series explores them all. Featuring the music of U.K. punk rock geniuses The Damned and U.S. punk rock sensation The Ramones.

Mindhunter - Season 2

Creator Joe Penhall’s 2^nd season of Mindhunter (2017 – ongoing), now available on Netflix, finds agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), along with academic sidekick Dr. Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), deep in the F.B.I. vaults, coming up with the term ‘serial killer’ and developing a methodology with which the law forces could decipher murders. In order to do that they meet and interview several – now infamous – serial killers, and try to catch others. Elegant and creepy, this is a masterwork, and because it totals a mere 9 episodes, there is no excuse for ‘true crime’ aficionados to not see it. Some episodes were directed by David Fincher and Blondie’s ‘Call Me’ is employed in a scene as well.

Following the death of his kingpin father, Genny Savastano (Salvatore Esposito), finds himself with an criminal empire in his hands, in the 3^rd season of Gomorrah (2014 – ongoing), while his childhood friend Ciro Di Marzio (Marco D’Amore), disappointed of his criminal family, flees to Bulgaria, in order to pursue further underworld escapades (he gets involved with human trafficking in particular, but he later proves to be a pimp with a heart of gold). Roberto Saviano’s seminal semi-titled book in which he told his adventures from the time when he infiltrated the organized crime of Naples still holds today as it remains the basis for Italy’s most popular television series. They may be a bit difficult to swallow for people that are not familiar with current Italian cinema (for example, the performances are a bit different from what they would possibly be in an American production), and the mood may be a bit too dark for casual viewers, but this is still a masterwork. The soundtrack by Mokadelic is often inappropriate (for instance, the Euro-trash disco music that is often employed is matches the thug aesthetics much better), but it gives identity to the show and it is one of the elements that separate it from the rest of the current gangster shows. Whereas other gangster epics were all about the family ties, this is about crime itself and doesn’t seem to hold family ties any great respect or to give them too much of a relevance. Slow burn but fascinating this is offering an accurate look at the world of Camorra. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger, making you eager to play the next one.

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