Black Space

So they couldn't check all students for GSR on the hands ? All we got from this serie was that israelí teenagers are as bad as every other narcissistic teenagers from any country.

Bad dialogue, story and pretty much everything adds up to this being nothing more than a shallow boring copy of more successful shows of it's like.

Do not recommend.

There's little cohesion in the arc of the story. Where is the forensics team? This is more of a "solve by mood" type of approach to a serious crime, and it's un-believable in light of detecting in this day and age. The back stories are weak and muddy; it's unclear what's going on and takes forever to get clues, and the supposed grievances that are supposedly driving their revenge actions are fuzzy. As far as revenge plots go, too many loose strands. It's a shame because the performances were good, but the story was no match for them. At the end, I was like, "That's IT?!" Pffft!

This Israeli drama opens as a ceremony is taking place in a high school; it is interrupted when three or four people wearing unicorn masks start shooting at the students. Four are killed. The building is quickly locked down and three Palestinian workers are promptly arrested... however there is no sign of the weapons or masks and Rami Davidi, the policeman leading the investigation is not convinced of their guilt. He believes the killers are amongst the students. As the investigation progresses we learn more about the various students leading to suspects emerging. We also learn about our protagonist; notably how he lost an eye while he was a student at the same school.

I found this to be a gripping series. The characters are interesting and the identity of the killers isn't too obvious. Davidi is good lead characters, Guri Alfi does an impressive job in the role, his backstory adds to his character without distracting from the main story. The rest of the cast are pretty solid too. The ending is perhaps a little melodramatic but not overly so. It must also be said that the student characters are mostly fairly unsympathetic; even those we know to be innocent. Overall this is a good, tense series and would recommend it despite some faults.

These comments are based on watching the series in Hebrew with English subtitles.

An entire school of dirty, smelly, drunken, stoned, cynical and amoral teens? Even the one kid with a respectable demeanor is a drug dealer and a forgery expert. Add in administrators who bury their heads in the sand, and a morose detective with a grudge that we never even get the full back story on.

Having said all that, I did like the concept of a middle aged detective assigned to a case at his old high school, and incorporating a handicap issue.

The plot was too hard and vague for me to follow. I watched it all and I still don't fully understand who did it and why. That's not a good sign.

The description mentions a small town, but it's clearly not. That is a big mistake. This is an urban setting that is obviously in a fairly upscale, secular area of Greater Tel Aviv. The urban aspect is part of what alienates the kids. Because there is no small town vibe.

By not including any normal kids, you get the sense that the entire student body is disaffected. That is not realistic.

Nevertheless, the actors played their parts convincingly, and our lead's intensity mixed with care was intriguing.