Also I should also preface this and say that this took me over two years to finish. I dropped it around episode 32 and picked it up again for ten episodes before dropping it once again. Now I want to say that I rarely if ever drop a show. I persevere and hope things will get better but with this show I couldn't do that. Over the course of this review I will try to explain why.
'kay. A lot of you are most likely angry with me already for not engulfing this show in a three day stint so now lets see how you handle my personal opinion. Right, so, how do I say say this. The writing is bad. So bad at points I would have to go do something else before even attempting to watch the rest of the episode.
The show assumes too little of the viewer. It spoon feeds the plot to us and honestly left me sighing at how some of the character reacted in certain situations. I want to say, I like the characters. They're good characters but sometimes they don't act like people.
For example I will use a scene from the later parts of the show. (Skip this paragraph to avoid spoilers) Man and wife enter a forest and find a dead body. Man [who has a gun] stumbles on the body first. Wife approaches and seeing the body assumes it was her hubbie who shot the man even though she was there with him the entire time and he didn't even shoot his gun. He continues to tell her it wasn't him and they ramble for a few seconds of unnecessary dialogue. It's just bad writing. There were many and more instances like this but I forced myself to tune them out.
The second issue I have with this show is the character Johann. From the beginning of this show they tell us how terribly evil and monstrous Johann is and yes, while he is evil and has killed a damn lot of people, his evil nature just seems a little forced. I mean every character describes him as a monster or devil and just glimpsing him makes people quiver for no reason whatsoever. It's a little heavy handed and honestly some subtlety would have done him wonders.
With that said this show is still really good and with a little editing and nip tucking this show could be something truly special. This is what I am hoping the HBO adaption will do. SO is it worth your time? It's pretty good although at times it may leave you feeling a bored.
