La familia Uysal

This is an unusual script, and I'm sure many people looking for something easy to digest will hate it, but I thought it was excellent. I particularly enjoyed the unconventional ending. The acting is also superb and the cinematography is good. The humor is very dry and dark. It's not exactly rolling on the floor laughing funny but it is engaging and some of the situations are so uncomfortably silly that there is no other appropriate response other than laughter.

The plot may appear to be promising, but it is not... They had, in my opinion, overlooked the main point of the story by excessively focusing on visual work. I mean, they did not include a simple heroic step (points) for Oktay and other characters proceeded very slowly-indeed, one could argue that there was no sign of character development. Do you think I am exaggerating? Then only watch the first and last two episodes; you will not miss anything (except very groovy angles, athmosphere, and desing.)

In addition, the intentions to depict skewed social dynamics and oppression (even ostracism) in certain scenes touched me, but those are just brief moments.

When the guy from trainspotting got a bag full of money, he decided to become and architect and settle down. He forgot about his past as a drug addict punk and focused on his family and career. He has a great apartment, kids, an engineer house wife. But once he turns 40, all this is not enough. He is longing for his youth. His everyday life becomes unbearable. And he is dressing up with his punk outfit, paying for the vacation and the drugs of some homeless punks. End of the story.

The only reason why you should watch this thing is Haluk Bilginer. He is fantastic and hilarious. You can't figure out if he really exists or if it's simply a hallucination of the protagonist. He really gets the vibe of what this series should be. Unfortunately the rest of the actors cannot keep up with his excellent approach.

This series is definitely not meant for the mainstream. It is more an arthouse-style series. If you watched other Turkish Netflix series, this is comparable with Ethos / Bir Baskadir. Unique characters, unique storytelling, unique work. It is slow but still moves forward. It has an amazing soundtrack and the DOP also made a good job, the visuals are incredible. Hakan Günday is known for his left political opinion and you can find many hidden messages and criticism regarding the government in this series. But the criticism is also going beyond the Turkish border - it is rather a global / social criticism. Everyone can feel free to be offended.

Uysallar is the story of a successful architect in a midlife and identity crisis who (barely) tries to keep his dysfunctional family together while looking to find closure from his past (traumatized by his emotionally distant, egoistic and stern father) in the times of the dog eat dog, fast-living, consumeristic, and "you don't know your neighbors anymore" type of world.

A promising package overall...interesting set up of a plot and characters, good camera work, for the most part good acting, great soundtrack(even though barely any punk rock), top locations, lovely production design, funky graphics. Especially when you consider that the vast landscape of turkish tv show industry (which is the world's fastest growing and Second highest television series exporter after the US) has been and is still delivering for the most part mainstream and mediocre productions full of outdated images of society(gender clichés, nationalism and overblown drama).

And here comes the BUT: The series felt like a bag of many good ideas that are thrown together like puzzle pieces with the hope they will come out as a perfect whole somehow. The main flaw is that there was no thorough commitment to explore the choices, motives, sub-stories of many important characters(especially Nil, Ege, Mert, Moloz and Fevzi). This affected their relatability on the one hand, and mattered a big deal to the choices of the main protagonist and the dynamics of the story on the other. They simply needed more depth and hence more time for exposure. Maybe it was not a creative decision but budgetary, maybe there will be a second season, which I doubt, but who knows.

In the end, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But also, I still think the glass is half full.