L'effrondrement

The highlight of this mini series is its realization. Each chapter is shot with a handheld camera and in a single continuous take without editing, which makes it a novel product and very difficult to film. Another feature of the series is that the last episode could be considered the first, since the final chapter tells the origin of how the collapse of the world began. Each episode is independent of the other and tells stories of ordinary people in an environment in which the planet has collapsed and there is a lack of food, energy services are scarce or failing and people try by all means to find a way to survive, as they As the episodes go by, there is a progressive count of the days that have passed since this collapse, so as the stories progress they are increasingly crude and violent. We can see how people are desperate to get food that is missing in a market, fuel to escape to a safer place or simply people with a lot of money who have hired special services that will take them to special bunkers so that they are safe. A very entertaining, innovative series, very well directed and acted, and with a message that will leave more than one viewer thinking about the real possibility that the day of the collapse can come true.

Ranging from episodes of fifteen minutes to twenty seven minutes this eight-parter told tales of disparate people and groups tenuously linked in some of the episodes.

The end was no longer nigh, it had happened. Capitalist society had broken down and the programmes explored various characters' reactions to survive the cataclysm.

Few of the episodes engaged me. However both the storyline and the acting in the episode set in the old folks home were a definite winner. I found the final episode the weakest of all as I could not believe either in the subversives nor in their acceptance by the television debate programme.

I also found the garage episode far fetched. A baseball bat would never have kept the ravening hordes away nor could it have stopped them sacking the place.

All in all an easy watch to fill in some time.

The episodes of this tv series talk about the collapse of the system. Money worth nothing and people fight for gas and food trying to survive. So far so good!

The "problem" is that everything is extremely predictable. What do you expect that will happen if the system collapses? People in panic , killing each other for food and gas, right? Well , exactly that is happening. There is no originality. Nothing in the story that justifies making a tv show. They have nothing new to say , they just repeat things we have already seen in all post apocalyptic shows and films.

But is that necessarily bad? I am not sure. There is a documanteristic feel in the episodes that make you think that you are watching the news and not a tv show and the fact that nothing unpredictable happens makes that feel even more intense. You feel like these are real people, out there fighting for their lives! You feel like it's something that is happening now. For that feel alone it's a show worth watching. It's a show that tries to be real in an era when every show tries to be as fake as possible. That is its originality. That is its justification!

L'Effondrement is about collapse of the civilization. It isn't crystal clear what caused the collapse. There might be a few hints, but basically all supply chains fall apart and with them, everything.

What I love about this mini-series is that we might experience something exactly like this*. The show catches panic, desperation and denial very well.

Each episode is dedicated to a different person or a group that experiences collapse in a different way. Some of them end relatively well. Some are a tragedy. A few go sideways...

*except Ep. 05, there are safety systems designed for situations.

From the first episode, the show captures the desperation of average people living in the hyper capitalistic world. People just want to continue to live their normal lives, but our normal lives have created a feedback cycle that will end in our self-destruction. There is no escape, and the unsettling feeling in the first episode carries through later heart wrenching stories of survival, desperation, and interspersed pockets of hope.

Highly recommend this show to anyone who has this feeling that modern society cannot continue down as we know it and to see what happens if we do. Just be prepared to be a bit uncomfortable, because the show feels real, and makes you question if you are doing enough to help prevent this type of situation from coming to fruition.

I loved the single take approach, it keeps the show personal further reinforces the hyper realism of the show. The single takes also feel more impactful as each episode reaches its conclusion.

Give it a try, if you can't find a place to stream it, google the name of the show in the subreddit collapse on reddit. That's where I found the subtitled episodes.