Outlander

The basic premise is very appealing, but unfortunately, as the episodes roll in, it's just pure fan service. The first three seasons are dedicated to Claire and Jamie, and later a new generation comes on the scene. Then it's up to everyone if they want to follow the original Scottish story in America. (12/11/2014)

An obvious romance story dressed up as an adventure movie, wrapped in the beauty of the Scottish Highlands. It’s basically vary kitsch, but the type that belongs to its genre and has a place in the system of things. The plot is sturdy, the casting right, sparks fly between the main protagonists and thanks to the extensive production budget it looks and sounds good; on paper it comes across pleasantly. On paper. And that is precisely the problem - I don’t think there is currently any other series that would suffer so much damage due to its literary roots; or rather on the incapability of understanding that this is an audio-visual adaptation and not a radio play. The storytelling takes place ignoring images. Everything (unimportant is imparted by the main protagonist doing a voice-over quoting the original text. This is a millstone dragging it under in twice over; it is being read from a book where it becomes quite clear after a couple of sentences (if you didn’t know yet) that it must have come straight out of a romantic novel (e.g. over the top melodramatic sentences like "I wished it were a dream, but I knew that it wasn’t.") and things are driven to absurdity when we see a character with a sad expression and we already know why she’s looking sad on the basis of what happened previously, but then the voice-over tells us that she is looking sad and why she’s looking sad. The explanatory voice of the heroine even speaks during the sex scene (no ironic quips, but words of wisdom such as "Sex was our bridge back to one another"). This in combination with the nothing doing story lacking any oomph (a pilot could have replaced most of the series in a third of the time without loosing any relevant information) drives you up the wall. As the episodes go by, it gets slightly better, but it never completely rids itself of this curse. Or if it ever does, I’ll no longer be watching to see. (09/24/2014)