It was an interesting idea to create prequel of sorts to a well-known book. The first three episodes follow the story of the ancestors who started it all, Hadzi Trifun remains the most interesting character. Then the story moves to his sons, yes sons, there's three of them, instead of one. Each one of them has wives, mistresses, children, grandchildren, problems so by the 7th episode you need to keep notes in order to understand who is who and how are they connected to it all. Instead of focusing on one family with few notable members they've created numerous plot lines and twist thus making the story bloated and pointless. The original protagonist Sofka has the least amount of screentime, her tale is speed run in episode 9 and she simply exists through it all, mostly silent. Episode 10 is by far the worst. Instead of a neat conclusion we get one more plot twist - Kostana, a beautiful singer whom another play, now is a part of this story as well, seemingly only here because of writers' dedication to connect every piece of Stankovic's work into one messy creation. The only constant is the suffering of various women, maybe even worse than the tragedy Stankovic described 100 years ago.
When in doubt they use nudity to draw attention. The authentic way of speaking is depicted with a few accentuated words similar to stereotypical comedy, the rest of the speech is identical to how people talk in Belgrade in 21st century. Although they deserve points for inclusion of Turkish. Costumes and cinematography are well done but this series has little else to offer.
Watch the first three episodes and skip the rest.
