Svět pod hlavou

I came across this by sheer chance when I accidentally recorded the second episode. I am here in the position of a passerby who catches a part of a conversation overheard by chance and based on that, guesses who the participants are. Such an "assessment" can of course be misleading and unfair, but we often apply it in life to avoid unnecessary disappointments and wasted time. I wonder if Ondřej Štindl's contribution to the script is dominant because otherwise, I get along very well with him, or rather with his journalism, and his film reviews appeal to me. But here I was more than puzzled. Actually, I have a fundamental problem with assigning a genre to the series. Above all, it seemed to me like a parody, not of life in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, but rather of distorted ideas that today's generation has about life in it and the functioning of its system. But the intention was clearly different. Simply put, it somehow got out of the creators' hands. The characters seemed like caricatures to me, and I didn't feel at all like I was in the realm of psychological drama, but rather some sort of sophisticated comedy. However, it was poorly acted, and, although I clearly identified the mystery genre, the mystery plotline seemed mismanaged. You see, the mystery genre is one of the most difficult and it requires balancing on pharmaceutical scales, subtracting and adding, so that it fits together and the result is worth it. (04.02.2017)

Despite my gross dissatisfaction with episodes five and nine, my overall review is positive. Admittedly, the lion's share of the success is due to Ivan Trojan as Lieutenant Plachý and his stream of deadpan one-liners. The series was very well cast, and as long as the creators did not forget to include humor, it worked really well. Its weakness was the oftentimes lackluster Václav Neužil and his recurring hallucinations. What I loved were the new investigative methods of the National Security Corps and their constant oscillation between trying to investigate and trying not to upset anyone. All in all, I had fun, and it’s certainly not the last time I’m watching this series. (30.04.2017)