I really expected more after some of the excellent Flemish series I have seen. The initial premiss is good, that anti-nuclear campaigners sabotage a reactor and cause a continent-wide blackout. Just as an aside, I was amused that the map of Europe and its lights that go out in the opening credits includes the UK - whose lights don't go out. lol. Is this a subtle reference to Brexit? Or is it an acknowledgement that the UK can stand alone?
Well, back to the plot, what there was of it. To me, it was inconceivable that a politician would take the actions she did due to the blackmail that she was under. Or that she would refrain from telling the cops on so many occasions. As for the saboteurs, it went from the sublime to the ridiculous. One minute they were idealists, then we were plunged into a tale of Kurdish freedom fighters seeking to steal nuclear waste. While this was happening, absolutely unbelievably, the Turkish government conducted a murderous secret service operation on Belgian soil. Turkey is an aggressive, lawless, oppressive state, but even they are not stupid enough to do that.
Every episode was a "just missed them" moment. We didn't get much of a follow up on anything. Did the Belgians hand the Kurds over, for example? What was happening to the general population during the blackout? Streets were empty, it seemed, enabling long police chases and swift journeys.
And finally we had the lone nutter angle. I still wasn't clear whether he had arranged the whole thing or had just drifted, deliberately, into it. It really wasn't a plot enhancement; it simply made the series more difficult to believe.
The final episode really was the pits. Cops who had been shooting with pinpoint accuracy previously, at the most important moment, suddenly somehow lost their aim at virtual point blank range.
There was really too much intuition going on that was based on nothing really. How to solve the investigation was not based on solid clues but on wild guesses and coincidences. With such flimsy material, the actors did their best but had to work against huge holes in the plot and the one-dimensional characters they had been given to portray. And these were good actors too who shone in other series and films.
I'm very disappointed. I watched to the end but it was a bit of an effort to carry on. That's why it got five stars because I wanted to see how it all ended. If there's nothing else to watch, then this just about serves to while away time. But I wish I had chosen something else.
