Olhar Indiscreto

No pun intended of course. The international title being quite ... well sassy I suppose. The show itself being steamy to a point (with some nudity), but also full of cliches too. There's so much backstabbing and so many twists your head will surely not sit right after watching this (and no I did not call you Shirley).

That all being said, I've seen better but also worse thrillers. Don't expect this to be too titilating I suppose or too clever for that matter. Actually after episode 1 you can almost skip to the last episode - because you get a recap of almost everything important anyway - with an explanation ... if that helps ... still you have to dig the premise and all that ... otherwise you will be bored I assume.

An ultimately silly and repetitious series feature one gorgeous woman after another. While I was drawn in at first, the writing's mediocrity became quickly apparent. It doesn't make sense that the protagonist, presented as THE voyeur, herself enjoys normal sex...a lot! To title a series after a pathology would do better to focus on it, otherwise it has no essential function to character development, only to launch the ho-hum plot, whose dreary, predictable coincidences seem contrived as opposed to spicy. Watched two episodes in one sitting, realized the next day that any residual curiosity had totally vanished. Note to self: visit Brazil soon on a "business trip", send wife on cruise with her friends. Just kidding, but those women ARE beautiful.

Lazy writing. The series follows a "50 Shades of Grey" kind of formula where the plot and characters are poorly developed and are there just to unsuccessfully connect a bunch of mediocre erotic clips while some random music plays in the background, completely leaving aside the thriller proposal.

Even if you forget about it and just try to give a chance to the erotical foccus of the series, Lady Voyeur also fails in delivering a good experience: the bad acting, misplaced catchphrases and the constantly attempts to create a sexual tension between the characters (almost every scene, even in the most akward situations) results in secondhand embarrassment only.

The series has one of the most unlikely scripts in recent times. They wanted to navigate all the so-called modern narratives of relationships, mainly sexual ones. The locations are few and poor. The actors, almost all of them have a poor. Acting. The comings and goings in time are now a cliché and, in this case, they confuse the story a little. The plot fails to create an atmosphere of tension, primarily due to the temporal spoilers, also due to the actors' unconvincing performance, which in my opinion were poorly directed. Not even the sex scenes manage to create an erotic atmosphere. In short, a tremendous catastrophe.

It feels like a lot of reviewers know very little about the culture from whence this series came. Thankfully this is not a Hollywood creation. The series is not obliged to conform to the expectations of an American audience, nor is it reliant on the American audience to measure its success. This isn't the first foreign series to get review bombed and still be mega successful on the global level, as indicated elsewhere on the world wide web where people are already asking for a second season.

Let's clarify a couple things. There wasn't as much sex in the series as some of the reviewers would have you believe. They make it sound like it's every 5 minutes. It's not. There are plenty of other things going on.

To be fair, the "voyeur" instances were few. Some were repeated via flashbacks to add additional details that set up upcoming plot twists. Based on that I don't feel feel that the title fit the series overall, but it's a catchy title nonetheless.

Two stars off. One for Ingrid Klug being cast as Rita, and the second star off for the writing for Rita. I've said this in a lot of my reviews: voice inflection and body language are important. Her characterization as Rita was corny, cheesy, and immersion breaking, but that was, in part, because of really bad writing for the character. Since Rita doesn't have much relevance to the overall story to have such a big part in it. I fast forwarded through most of the scenes with her in them.

The beauty in this type of storytelling is that just when you think you've figured out the plot, and who did what, you find out that you haven't figured out anything at all. The story twists and turns with murder, danger, sex, romance, betrayal and intrigue. It keeps you engaged, which is the kind of storytelling that I have grown to love in telenovelas. This one was one of the most complex and detailed that I've ever watched.

If you're familiar with Latin American and Iberian style storytelling you'll enjoy this thoroughly. It's not perfect, but it's really good.