dundeal78

I'll get this out of the way: The filter was a difficult thing to get past. It did make it appear cheap, which it is not. But it did give the feeling of watching a graphic novel, which didn't fit with a WW2 story, in my book anyway. However, I also understand this was a budgetary consideration. It also made me consider how this story got "shopped' to producers. With Band Of Brothers already out there, and the standards it set for this kind of project, I'm sure the story would either have gotten altered to fit the budget or rejected out of hand because of the cost it would have to bring it to the same quality, or done with terrible special effects and third rate actors. So I got over it. We got CGI tanks instead of cardboard bulldozers (the snobby critics would've carped about the tread and bogey patterns of the Panzers as they did about Saving Private Ryan and BOB.) It still made me drop a couple of stars, though. The story itself was compelling, and what might have been sacrificed for filter, the dialogue wasn't sacrificed and the story got to be told the right way. And that's better than not getting to see it at all.

Well acted, Gorgeously filmed; Poorly conceived. Revisionist History can be a riot. See Inglorious Basterds, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, even The Man in the High Castle. You can throw history aside, suspend disbelief and still have a good time... as long as the story is well told and, more importantly, logical within it's own framework. This, sadly, does not. No story is believable if everybody wins, gets everything they dreamed of. This was like watching a Stanley Cup or a Super Bowl where no score is kept, both teams get the trophy and everybody gets a ring... and the world is a better place for it. That adds up to boring, dull, silly, and a waste of time.

I watched the original Charite', which was focused on the "competition" between Drs. Robert Koch and his developing treatment for tuberculosis, and Emil Behring, who discovers an effective cure for diphtheria. Both series are well produced and written, and capture the "zeitgeist" of both eras represented in this series. Both series set high standards for both production and performance, but I have to give the nod to this latest installment. It backs off the melodrama a bit more than its predecessor, and gives-- what I believe-- a more clear-eyed perspective of the political times and the trials and tribulations of the German people in WW2. It scores extra points in that this perspective is viewed through the eyes of non-combatants and non-political figures in Nazi Germany. This series and "Babylon Berlin" (really waiting for the next installment of this gem) are huge leaps forward for German television, threatening to not only becoming a peer of the BBC and other British programming, but shows signs the Germans are ready to assume the role of being the class of European exporter of "small screen" production. Good stuff.