Czech Century

E01: 3/10 The topic is certainly interesting but squeezing all that into less than 80 minutes was practically impossible. I watched it anyway out of curiosity, to see how the authors had managed. But the result was even worse than I had thought. It made me think of Lincoln. Both works were incredibly boring, but Lincoln was at least matter-of-fact and captured the crucial moments. The first episode of this series was not just boring, but also badly filmed. I'm not an expert on filmmaking, but the sound was awful, the dialogues were excessively long, most of them irrelevant and fundamental events were skipped. And those weren’t the only things that were kind of lame. It takes more than just to gather as many Czech and Slovak movie stars as possible, thinking the magic will work itself, and then just say that there was a guy called Masaryk and one day Czechoslovakia was established. A really poor effort on the authors’ part. (28.10.2013)

Pilot: Unusually well-made for a Czech series. Father of the Nation, Masaryk, is presented here as a master of manipulation, a subversive element and the EU probably wouldn’t be very pleased with his opinions. The acting performances are excellent. It turns out that we have some really good actors; all they need is some meaningful dialogs and they will delight both the creators and the viewers. Martin Huba gives a very confident performance in episode one, even though it is Donutil who excels in their final verbal exchange. This series charts the history of the first century of the existence of Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, starting with its founding in 1918, through occupation by the Nazis during WW2, forty years of Communism and then the Velvet Revolution and Václav Havel, the split of Czechoslovakia, right up to the present day. All in all an excellent project and one of the best series ever made by Czech Television. (03.11.2013)

The most important thing is not to consider Czech Century a scripted documentary, even though the format may suggest it. Sedláček and Kosatík usually reduce complex historical processes to thesis-like dialogues between two prominent personalities of the respective era. They subjectively adjust their attitudes and arguments according to their own ideas. Each of the portrayed events, if comprehensively approached, would be sufficient for a decent series on its own. With this approach, they become mere fragments of history in a significantly subjective presentation. In some cases, the casting is disruptive (typically Emanuel Moravec, who Daniel Landa portrayed with the presentation of his own opinions and speaking style). In the early episodes, the lack of courage to use German is noticeably evident, which comically stands out, especially in the dialogue between Count Thun and Masaryk, where the memorable sentence "You don't even speak Czech" is heard. The quality level of individual episodes varies, but as a whole, the series just manages to hold on to a four-star rating. Overall impression: 70%. (04.11.2018)