Peacemaker

Have not seen for a while such a good series! when is the second season starting?!

I was waiting and waiting for some intrigue or betrayal to happen but sadly only nothing happened. The lead is an expert negotiator convinced out of retirement to work out a UN peace deal between Turkey and the Kurds. They throw in weapons dealing and oil pipeline deals to interfere with the peace deal.

By the second or third episode I knew I should have never started this binge. I couldn't figure out which storyline was the important one as they were all equally boring. I fell asleep a bunch of times and ultimately finished the series but I cannot remember much of anything. This was a colossal waste of my time. I hope cannot recommend this to anyone.

Relevance on steroids. Who's leaking? Kurdistan?, Turkey?, Israel? Iran? Saudis? US?, UK?, Russian Federation ?, ISIS?, et. Al. OMG the can of worms reality depicted very professionally by a great cast and production that makes the Great Game VII and fraught global dynamics touch home with the team's energy and powerful impacts on lives real.

This series has certainly had a lot of money thrown at it and it shows. The sets are exotic as are the locations where much of the series is filmed. This lends an air of authenticity to the storyline, enhanced by real countries being named rather than the cop out of inventing imaginary ones that everyone knows don't exist. Even more realistic is that the producers did not shy away from the truth. Turkey does oppress the Kurds; the USA has an interest in continuing worldwide conflict; Finland, despite its position as the least corrupt country on Earth, engages in murky deals to questionable customers.

The characters are believable, even the minor ones. I can certainly believe the American special forces leader who simply wants to kill Muslims and orders his men to do so is typical of his breed. I can also believe in the murderous double dealing done by the Turkish state and the devious strategies carried out by the leadership of the Kurds.

Despite being a Finnish production, 95% of the spoken dialogue is in English. I'm always wary of non native speakers carrying the weight of a film or series on their shoulders but here every actor spoke very fluent or perfect English. I always watch with subtitles as I'm going a bit deaf, but I caught most of what was being said most of the time, so good was the characters' English.

There's human interest as well, of course. Family relationships and structures were dealt with sensitively as were romantic attachements. These meshed with the political aspects of the story and didn't feel grafted on.

There were twists and turns, of course and some of the characters were not who they seemed to be. There were plots within plots. The overarching theme of negotiating for peace drew everything together with the malign influence of the US on the side supporting anti democratic players and state terrorism as it does in real life. There were no punches pulled here at all. It's quite clear who the baddies are and it's the US and Turkey. The freedom fighters were portrayed sympathetically although a couple of them had feet of clay and betrayed their own idealism.

The ending in Oslo was perfect. But there was a small addition after that which left open the possibility of a second season. If it's made, I'd definitely watch it.

In real life, Everyone's got a stake in this game, and everyone's both a good guy and bad. The show fell for the easy out of the US being the "big baddie" as most shows tend to do, but that is just lazy if you ask me. The land unofficially known as Kurdistan is prime real estate for just about every country surrounding it for a zillion reasons and not a single one of those neighbors look very favorably on it attaining autonomy. It is the most uphill battle of battles and will be for quite some time, if not forever. The parallel to the creation of Israel is most apt but Turkey is a most formidable foe in the Kurdish struggle.

But this is aTV show and altogether handled a hot potato subject pretty darn well. The acting, production value and writing were well done and it was an exciting adventure to go along on and hope for that all elusive breakthrough. It seemed to leave an opening for a second season which I hope is so and would definitely watch.