See

Another excellent series this year, which will no doubt be in this year's top 3. Apple TV hits right on the mark for me, serving up an imaginative post-apocalyptic world 600 years in the future, where humanity has lost its ability to see due to an epidemic and had to adapt and learn how to survive in these conditions. There are a lot of complains that the blind people in the show do things they couldn't really do, which is debatable because unless you are blind yourself you are not entitled to judge, secondly it is a series from the future, not a documentary based on real events, and thirdly in 600 years humanity will have definitely evolved, so the other senses work very differently than they do now. So much for the haters and now for the rest of us who love cinema and like to be entertained. See is a spectacularly filmed production (visually there hasn't been anything better looking since Game of Thrones) with an excellent Jason Momoa, who rose perhaps two levels in acting during the series, but the other characters are great too: Commander Tamacti Jun is perfect, the Tyrannical Queen who gets fawned over by servants while praying, the Bow Lion or the Shadow, who has the ability to move around in silence, and of course the two newborn children who are the only ones with the gift of sight. Every episode features at least one riveting action with unorthodox choreography, and violence is not spared. The series gradually doses surprising twists and turns, with danger lurking at almost every turn (slave traders selling people on the black market or the city of worms where workers make silk maze). At times the series is so suspenseful and gripping that I found myself in bed, sweating, tearing my hair out and breathing with great difficulty. The finale is surprising with a beautiful final fight (you wouldn’t want to fight Momoa blindly) and a nice lure for a second season. A fun, addictive and engrossing series like I never dreamed of. 9/10. (12/08/2019)

Season 1 – 60% – There's not an episode where I wasn't marveling at the beautiful landscape, the thoughtfulness of the post-apocalyptic environment, and the rules of the local life. Unfortunately, just as often, I found myself shaking my head at why characters in such an attractively built world would be dealing with the stuff they're dealing with, why they argue about nonsense instead of actually doing something, and why the confused queen gets so much attention. On few other projects is it so evident how many resources and how much effort was devoted to the details. That's why it saddens me that as time went on, my expectations dwindled down to merely waiting for Baba Voss, played by the tireless Jason Momoa, to once again go thrash, dismember, or mutilate someone. It is precisely the avenging angel he portrays that makes See an worthwhile experience. Apart from him (and perhaps the unreadable samurai Tamacti Jun), I was hardly interested in anyone else, so my anticipation of the sequel is quite indecisive and conflicted. (01/11/2021)

Top-notch special effects, but a couple of old bridges and one dam certainly didn’t swallow the entire crazy budget. More likely Baba Voss rightly demanded a huge fee. Momoa and his decapitation antics are the series' most entertaining attraction. Someone should make a new Conan the Barbarian as a miniseries! A story of two kids born with sight who go to jail to visit their dad has a subtext that is both natural and racist. An evil black man destroying nature again = Canada burning coal. Baba sums it up nicely in the library. But I think that See would work much better as a book. Knight needs room to illustrate the thinking and motives of some of the characters properly, to understand just why they behave like cretins. Take Queen Kane and her dumb plan! How could she even hope that her plan could ever work? There must be some easily defendable reason hidden inside that sick mind of hers, but I would like to know it and not just make assumptions. To accept the fact that the blind are somehow weirdly blind is a game I’m willing to play. Some are a little like Daredevil and then again some aren’t… ok, I can dig that. I’m still looking forward to season 2, even though it has a long way to go in terms of screenwriting. (02/22/2020)