The Broken Marriage Vow is the Philippine adaptation of the highly acclaimed psychological thriller-drama entitled Doctor Foster, which has been remade by several countries all over the world. I can say, South Korea's The World of the Married is the most popular out of all adaptations because of its outstanding performance from the actors, great cinematography and intriguing story-telling. The World of the Married is the reason why I was able to find Doctor Foster, and realized that it was a remake. I was shocked at first. You won't even think that it was just a remake... truly a great show.
As for The Broken Marriage Vow I can say that this is such a bland adaptation. If you've seen the original or any other adaptations, you will also see all those in here. They didn't improve the story and anything except for the cultural set and costume design. I suggest to not listen to the praises of the fans because their comments are very misleading. They're just exaggerating, and trying to make it "the best" than the other adaptations wherein in fact this is the least among all adaptations. Expect less or you'll get disappointed. Every episode will only make you compare to the others which one executed better. That's it. There's no element of surprise.
What's even worse is that they changed the concise, fast-paced storyline into a dragging, repetitive, all over the place story which became really dull and forced in so many ways. The series started well. It followed the exciting first few episodes of the original but as the series progressed, the excitement was gone and the series turned into an uninteresting mess. I think the only powerful moment here is the iconic dinner confrontation scene, but everything after that just falls flat. They made most of the characters and scenes silly, somewhat unreasonable (especially the character of the son). What are the writers trying to point out here? Do they think the viewers are too dumb to know that? Also, where's the "psychological" factor? I thought this was going to be a "psychological thriller"? I didn't see it here. This is more like a "Filipino telenovela". It is romantic in some ways and melodramatic in so many ways. It shows no psychological thriller element at all.
Coming to cinematography, I like the idea of single-camera type of shots, good job for that but I think their editors should have also put a lot of effort in editing their raw footage. The editing looks amateurish in a lot of ways. Few of those are; The sound. The background sounds and music are too loud and a blast. There are times that it overpowers the dialogues of the characters. Second, the color grading. Color grading is a confusion. It is different in every scene. There are some scenes that are warm, orange, brownish in tone while others are cool, blue, dark greenish in tone. What a terrible mess. The editor should have made it unified and in one color tone. Lol seems like the editor always forgot what color he used, that's why it didn't match the scenes.
Will I recommend this to you? I'm not sure. It's up to you. You have many adaptations to choose from anyway. Better if you see the original Doctor Foster first, and some other adaptations like; The World of the Married (South Korea adaptation), Infidele (France adaptation) and Sadakatsiz (Turkey adaptation), so you'll understand where my point is coming from.
