Matt C

Absolute masterpiece. The quality of both the production and acting in this four-part docudrama is outstanding, not to mention the riveting story that takes you from alternative-scene post-Communist Berlin, in the early 90s, to Silicon Valley in the late 90s, through to the present day, all with brilliant sets, fantastic camera angles and stimulating soundtrack. The story of Terra Vision is one you've probably never heard of, but you'll wonder how the hell you haven't by the end of this series. Absolutely insane what happened and I highly recommend you give this a watch. The series is in German but has English subtitles and many of the legal scenes involving lawyers are in spoken English. Either way, it's really easy to follow and I recommend watching it in its original form.

The premise is great, the execution not so much. This could have been a 5 star, but there were so many factors that needed improvement. I'll start with what I really enjoyed: the diversity and sense of cultural cooperation between some of the characters (despite the racist ones). There are characters speaking several different languages and from a variety of backgrounds. It really gave a sense of a European culture united in diversity and made me feel proud to be European. The characters from different EU member states interacted with eachother as Americans from different states would do. It was really nice to see. Obviously there was conflict between the characters but that was the underlying impression I got. The soundtrack is nice and action-packed and the settings and props, although limited, seemed pretty good. As someone who loves planes, travelling and science, the premise sounded like a dream come true. However, it goes down hill from here. The implementation of said premise made many parts of this series cringey and left me with a feeling that they could have tried harder. In-between some of the scenes they show the plane flying over the terrain below. Except what they do, in every single episode, they show one of two images under the plane: 1) a coastline 2) a lit-up city I should problem mention that it's the exact same coastline and city every single time, despite the fact that when they show it they're in a different location than previously and sometimes they're not even supposed to be over land when they show the city. The worst part: to add a bit of variety, they just rotate the whole shot of the flyover 90 degrees each time. It was so ridiculous. This was either supposed to be some artistic representation of the journey or just a ridiculous failure in their part with a complete lack of creativity or, perhaps, budget, to blame. This is also demonstrated with a lack of graphic detail into how people actually die from the disaster. When a character is abandoned they don't cut back to them to show their death. At best, they show the aftermath. This isn't said our of need for a gorey film, but rather because I feel that, without this, there's no emotional loss of s character and less of a sense of the severity and impact of the ongoing disaster. It makes everything look rushed and cheaply produced and ends up making the series less dynamic and variable in terms of emotional value. In fact, they could have done with showing more of the background for each character in general. Again, this is likely either through lack of creativity or budget, or both. The science shown and discussed was dubious at best and made some choices made by the characters look downright ridiculous. The acting was actually really quite good for some actors and terrible for others. Sylvie in particular was a really good character and portrayed excellently by the actor, as was Matthieu and several others. Some characters, especially the English-speaking ones, were awfully acted out and it felt cheesy as hell. Overall, if you feel like watching something action-packed and a bit different, and don't mind looking the other way when the science sounds off and the acting gets cheesy, it's a good watch. They're doing a second season which I will actually be watching despite my low-ish score because, despite the blatant flaws, there's a lot in this series that I can't find in others and which I want to see more of. I can only hope they step up the game a bit.