show is a waste of great cast
I stopped watching in the middle of 2nd episode, couldn't take it anymore.
I agree: It is a great cast, indeed! But would you elaborate as to why you stopped watching?
shareWell, the narrative didn't exactly grab me, and some of the scenes I thought were too unrealistic and poorly written. There wasn't enough there to keep me interested - there are so many great series I barely have the time for, I am not willing to waste it on this.
Well, the cast is great and the story lacks a bit here and there, some smaller details are wrong. But it's the 2nd ep! (Although with spy stuff you should be as accurate as possible. Adds to the flair …) The show still has great potential, if they sort some things out first. Maybe you should come back to the show after some 3-4 episodes and try again?
shareAgree about its being poorly written. Spy films is one of my favorite genres, but I found the first two episodes hard to understand. I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to rooting for someone. Guess I'll have to be patient and hope it all comes together by episode 5. There is something weird about this show, as if the writer would have written more clearly if only more of the plot had been declassified. Hard to tell a story if most of it is redacted.
shareHave you read Olen's "Yalta Boulevard" series of novels by chance?
The style is very similar to "Berlin Station." A lot of sketchy, short-hand type of characterization and plot. But I still kept reading (or listening as it were on the audio books).
He's a fine writer. His novels are very good. The only thing I found slightly less interesting about them being also a cold war/spy novel/show follower....was that in the Yalta Boulevard books they take place post-war in a country that is a USSR communist satellite with all the intrigue that made for our protagonist, a police officer.
I felt it was Hungary, or Czech, maybe. But the fact that it was never precisely defined as a real country made it difficult to relate to the narrative. We bring so many things we already know from real life when reading these cold war novels--because we know the place, the leaders, the events.
But this was just a bit too fantasy to gel properly in the YB novels. I had no frame of reference in which to judge the protagonist or his society. It's hard to explain but perhaps that was Olen's goal--to write about a non-specific place so you focus on the existential journey of the characters.
Dunno.
But all that by way of saying when "Berlin Station" seems a bit sketchy at times, I've seen that before. In his novels. So, it's as though it's his style.
However, not sure folks are going to take to that style, unless they recognize it from his books and know he still produces good stories in spite of the airy-fairy bits in setting.