O Colapso

This is a great miniseries, comprised of 15-20 min long episodes.

Each episode is shot in one take, and this is a great achievement by itself. They are by no means static episodes - they don't take place inside a room, with people sitting down and talking. These are fast, action-packed episodes, where we follow people in different situations after the collapse of our economy and society. Thus, the planning and shooting of the series deserves the greatest credit.

What we take for granted every day in our civilized societies, the flow of goods and services, the civility of people themselves, depend on a great deal of interdependence and abundance of resources. Our global economy acts with the notion that we should grow and expand infinitely, buy more, consume more, and exploit the resources, the people and the world in the process.

We think this can never change. Actually, we don't think about it at all. We continue our roles assigned to us in our everyday lives.

The truth is that it all hangs by a thin thread. It can all change very easily and quickly.

We saw the prequel in the first days of Covid-19, when the supermarkets were depleted of goods, and people were actually fighting over the last items of food or toilet paper.

We depend on the cogs of the machine working perfectly, to survive.

This series gives an enlightening glimpse of how events may unfold when the system stops functioning one day. Recommended.

If you liked those epic long one shot's scenes brought to you by the combo Alfonso Cuarón + Emmanuel Lubezky, you will love this series. You also can notice their influence on the authors of L'Effondrement, because the plot of the movie also brings a postapocalyptical theme.

Don´t look up is another recent comparison regarding the topics covered in one of the chapters of this series. Bringing some uncomfortable truth to the table and having to deal with people's indifference.

Technically astounding, i dont know yet how they filmed some parts of the scenes, but I understand that they put a lot of work into preparing them.

The acting is amazing. Every character is depicted in great detail, and you connect and empathize with each of them.

One of the best series of recent times, and they didn´t need eight seasons for achieving that. Just eight 20min chapters.

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.