Necrotongue

I found the lead actor extremely unlikeable. He recited his lines as convincingly as a tractor driver on TV news. I wasn’t pleased with Pavel Kříž’s wooden acting either and the representatives of Hell were the culmination of everything bad. Bolek Polívka was a very bad choice for the role of Lucifer and both devils were as if straight out of Zdeněk Troška’s films (not a compliment). I gave one star for the fact that it didn’t become the Pirates of the Caribbean. I still don't understand why fairy tales have turned into musicals with pathetic tunes and lyrics. One moment I’m watching a fairy tale and the next I’m suddenly watching a lame musical. Odd.

With my views on the church aligning with King Richard's, I thoroughly enjoyed the third episode. Rowan Atkinson was weaker in the first season, but Brian Blessed dominated. I'd never dare visit Turkey without him!

The humor was sometimes didn't quite hit the mark, but I still had a great time. Brian Blessed stole the show as King Richard. It's interesting to see Percy and Baldrick as minor background characters so far.

Season 1 was average/slightly above average. The second season didn't make it that high. While the story around Jonkhere bank was still intriguing, the Belgian-African adventure was often boring, the protagonist seemed more and more insipid, and the logic faded over time, and with it the whole story. All in all, I wasn’t impressed by the series, and I consider it to be a waste of time.

I wasn’t very pleased with Season 2 of Salamander. Granted, it couldn’t have really disappointed me either, because after the first season I wasn’t expecting anything groundbreaking. I was just surprised how the creators gave up on their effort to write a good story. In fact, they only used what they thought had worked last time and applied the same strategy to the second season, which bummed me out right from the start and it didn’t get any better afterwards. I was quite bored, the characters’ actions often didn’t make sense, and I was glad when it was finally over.

The tenth episode was truly a "dignified" ending to the second season and actually to the entire series. The creators disregarded logic, the storyline (however poor it was), and any coherence with reality, and focused on a rushed ending so they could move on and devote themselves to some new, equally high-quality project.

At first, I thought it could be quite an action-packed episode that could improve the ratings, but then came a long sequence (and by that I mean really long) after which I finally got to the big action-packed conclusion of the episode, and it turned out the way it turned out. Some moments were disgustingly predictable, only for the seasoned detective to perfectly surprise me by forgetting about the sniper due to his impending senile dementia, behind which he had originally hidden so swiftly. That was truly a mockery.

I don't think that the creators could pleasantly surprise me anymore in the conclusion of the series. There is likely no escape from what they have cooked up themselves, and even if there were, there would be no one to carry out the escape. This is how clumsy Paul Gerardi must continue stumbling through the story, occasionally attacking someone, occasionally breaking into somewhere, simply Belgium...

Regardless of how it works in Belgium, the seventh episode really surprised me because instead of a below-average crime story, it brought a below-average romantic movie spiced up with an action scene. I was very amused by Jamie's reaction to the video he watched. When I remember how ready he was to take down Nicola to fulfill the task, I have to assume that he would do it with his eyes tightly closed:-)

I often criticize the writer of the series, but after watching the sixth episode, I am not so sure anymore that I am doing it rightfully. Maybe it just works completely differently in Belgium than everywhere else. I really don't know anything about it, so it's possible that the prime minister comes home in the evening like an ordinary bank official, without being watched by a team of bodyguards, and it's also possible that a person whose sister works as a luxury prostitute becomes the prime minister. I don't really believe that, so I give it 2 stars.