Tag: Topic

Iskander series seasons 1 and 2 – TV Review

Chloe (Stephane Caillard) and Dialo (Adama Niane) in season 1 of Topic’s original series ISKANDER, Photo courtesy of Topic

Season 2 of Topic’s original TV series ISKANDER debuts Thursday, Jan. 13, with the entire season 1 also available for streaming starting on that date. The four-episode debut season of ISKANDER, a crime drama from French TV, delivers a solid mystery in an exotic setting – French Guyana.

In season 1, we meet Chloe (Stephane Caillard), a police officer banished to this post in the remote jungle setting of Cayenne for some unspecified act of insubordination. On her first day, she’s partnered with veteran detective Dialo (Adama Niane), and sent to the site of a gruesome murder. They find a catamaran adrift up river with the bodies of two white do-gooders who were distributing educational materials to isolated villages. She learns many locals resent such seemingly benevolent acts. Those descendants of African slaves the French imported fear those efforts will cause their children to abandon their own language and culture.

Even so, the crime appears to have been committed as some kind of religious ritual. The husband and wife weren’t just killed. They were mutilated and posed with other objects in an excessively bloody manner. Their young son is missing. Unraveling all of this is fills the rest of the season.

Chloe is smart and tough, but rather arrogant for one thrust into a new and different culture, showing little concern for local customs and key figures. The urgency of rescuing the child denies her the time than needed for a learning curve, even if she were less headstrong about the job. Dialo knows people in all segments of the populace. During their investigations, we learn that he’s troubled by similarities to a long pattern in the area involving child abductions for arcane purposes.

Four episodes is the right length for getting to know these characters, understanding their specific environs, and remaining engaged in this suspenseful plot. The story unfolds with a fair amount of action, and considerable explanation of how present attitudes and beliefs were shaped by the former colony’s history, including the meaning and significance of ISKANDER. Chloe initially seems like a bit of a jerk, but we wind up thinking whoever she pissed off to be sent there probably deserved what she did to him.

Season 2 expands to six episodes, and moves Chloe from the tropics to her snow-covered hometown of St. Pierre et Miquelon – a French territory off the coast of Newfoundland. She returns because of her mother’s suicide, and to provide for her brain-damaged younger brother, Francois (Axel Granberger).

Though watching the first year is not essential to enjoying this second one, a significant carryover element makes more sense for those who have. The season’s opening recap won’t be as effective in linking her past to this present. As before, there are some supernatural/occult aspects to the crimes Chloe confronts.

For starters, her brother is accused of murdering a couple of local louts. Her attempts to clear him are deeply resented and resisted by the local cops, despite her mother’s tenure as their highly-respected leader. Chloe was apparently something of a bad-ass in her youth there, causing many to hold grudges despite her having evolved to the right side of the law.

As the mystery unfolds, Chloe discovers a laundry list of serious felonies swirling in that quaint, idyllic island community, subjecting her to threats on several fronts, with little reliable support. This season delivers more action and plot complexity than the first, maintaining suspense throughout. It serves as another compelling binge one may be spurred to complete in a day. OK. Maybe that’s just me; you may have more stuff to do.

As before, Chloe’s shortcomings are more humanizing than off-putting. Granberger’s performance as her mentally-challenged brother with some fascinating interests is a substantial asset for both our emotional engagement and the suspense factor. The tone of Season 2 is as different from the first as the climate of its setting, but the scripting and breadth of the cast make it even better.

Seasons 1 and 2 of ISKANDER (alternatively titled MARONI), in mostly French with English subtitles, is available for streaming on Topic as of Thursday, Jan, 13, 2022; alternatively titled MARONI)

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

PERSONA – TV Review

A scene from the television series “Persona” streaming on Topic. Courtesy of Topic.

PERSONA is a subtitled Turkish 12-episode TV miniseries offering a unique protagonist in a suspenseful crime drama. Agah (Haluk Bilginer) is a retired, widowed civil servant who learns he’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He’s been burdened with a whopper of a secret for many years involving serious criminal conduct by a whole village full of men – some of whom wield far more influence than they should. With the sun imminently setting on his lucidity, he decides to go vigilante and avenge the old wrongs by bumping off as many of the evildoers as he can before his competence and personality yield to the disease. The idea is to be the man he’s wished he were before losing the ability to even be the man he is.

For a lifelong desk jockey, Agah shows amazing resourcefulness and skills in starting his mission. But this is no Charles Bronson revenge flick. Agah screws up periodically, and needs a bunch of lucky breaks along the way. His mental status ebbs and flows, consistent with the usual course of this condition, flagging at very inconvenient moments more than once. His freedom to covertly form and execute his extensive plan is further complicated by the arrival of his estranged daughter and her surly teenaged son. The daughter’s whiny, annoying presence quickly reminded me (not in a good way) of an American crime series character – Tony Soprano’s pain-in-the-ass sister.

Agah’s efforts split screen time with focus on our other protagonist – police detective Nevra Elmas (Cansu Dere) who is prominent in the high-profile task of catching what seems to be Turkey’s first serial killer. She has her own problems, not the least of which is the blatant sexism she faces as the only woman in the homicide bureau. Her role in the hunt becomes more crucial as the killer leaves messages addressed to her on his victims. Her relationship to either the killer or the corpses he piles up is as much a mystery to her as to the audience.

Since this unfolds over about 12 hours of running time, the script includes many other characters and issues – past and present – that flesh out the personas of our key players, while gradually revealing layers of the driving forces behind Agah’s plans. The result is a slow, intense complicated drama that rewards the patient and attentive viewer by delivering numerous dimensions of emotional depth and character development enhancing the underlying suspense tale.

Topic is streaming this by releasing the first four episodes, followed by weekly issue of the others. I’d recommend waiting until you can binge about a half-dozen before starting. Those early chapters of setup and intros proceed at a rather glacial pace that could try your patience. The ensuing hours deliver more action, boosted by moments of warmth and humor, than the first four might lead one to expect. The latter are still on the slow side, but no more so than most multi-episode European crime imports. The unique Alzheimer’s premise, along with other shrewd creative decisions by writer Hakan Gunday, keeps this tale from being as predictable as many of its rivals for your attention.

PERSONA, in Turkish with English subtitles, begins streaming on Topic on Dec. 2

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

A scene from the television series “Persona,” streaming on Topic. Courtesy of Topic.

“NOX” – TV Series Review

A scene from the French crime thriller TV series “NOX,” streaming on Topic. Courtesy of Topic.

“NOX” is a six-episode subtitled miniseries from French TV that is far more complicated than most, but worth investing the requisite degree of concentration. It’s perfect for binging, since that makes it easier to stay with all the characters and subplots unfolding before you. It starts as cops vs. bank robbers, from the vantage of detective partners Julie and Raphael (Maiwenn and Malik Zidi, respectively) as they figure out which bank will targeted next. They nail it, but most of the thieves manage to escape into Paris’ elaborate underground systems of tunnels. Julie dashes into the dark ahead of her partner and inexplicably vanishes.

The hunt for her is on, but subterranean Paris (at least in this presentation, if not in fact) is three levels of spider webs under the entire city, with the lowest dating back to the Roman Empire’s occupation. No one has explored all of them. Some parts are closed. Others are rarely visited, holding centuries of secrets. Some parts shelter the homeless; others provide cover for all sorts of criminal activity. This explanation is provided because much of the action and the major plot drivers are based there, making the labyrinth more of a central character than a menacing setting.

Julie’s mom Catherine (played by Nathalie Baye) is a disgraced former detective with a personality that’s a force of nature. She pushes her way into the effort, variably pissing off everyone while alternately helping or hindering their efforts. Raphael is guilt-ridden due to his closeness to Julie and his being the last to see her. Catherine’s withering finger-pointing does nothing for his morale, either.

Along the way, many possibilities are dangled for Julie’s fate. Alive or dead? Underground or living abroad? Captive of criminals, or perhaps even some supernatural entity? Not only that, are all the cops involved trustworthy? The search becomes even more complicated when they discover the remains of many bodies encased in the walls. Perhaps this mysterious force or some regular human felons have been bumping off an untold number of Parisians for decades.

There’s a lot of plot to unpack, but you’re best left on your own for the rest of the premise and paths the players follow. NOX is gritty and gruesome, but never gratuitous. You may not like or empathize with the leading figures much of the time, but the twisty story arcs should certainly engage the minds of the attentive. Performances are excellent from everyone in this large cast on both sides of the law, and in between. Visually, it’s often more akin to a horror flick than to crime dramas, given the time spent underground, not knowing who or what to expect at each turn. Director Mabrouk El Mechri makes excellent use of his many settings within the dank labyrinth, keeping a boatload of story elements from six credited writers suspenseful, and relatively tight for multi-episode TV fare.

“NOX,” in French with English subtitles, is available for streaming Oct. 28 on Topic.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars