High Water

Wow, just wow. Got hooked up and binged all episodes in one afternoon. Terrific acting and marvellous shots of a major urban city hit by the flash flood. It has the vibes of "The Last of Us" video game, and the HBO's "Chernobyl" series, showing incompetence of the government in face of a natural disaster.

The cast are fantastic and really makes you care what's about to happen to the characters, especially later as the story develops. The main female character reminds me of Carrie in Homeland, I don't want to spoil why - played by a superb actress that made me weep in key moments.

I watched the original with subtitles but the English dubbing is pretty good also. An Emmy's on a way, well done Netflix, for once.

Based on real events I found High Water engrossing from its first episode on until its conclusion. Employing fictional characters to portray the impending disaster was a clever move by the show makers. It allowed the leads to be portrayed in depth without any possible lawsuits, and there's a moving sub-plot that gets resolved close to the end. Filming and acting was great throughout, I especially enjoyed the female lead who tried to warn the incompetent local bureaucrats stuck in the past. In a way it's reminiscent of another recent brilliant series Five Days at Memorial, about the Hurricane Katrina tragedy.

Only one thing ruined the 10* review from me... In the beginning of the first episode, action was set in Poland in 1997 but the actress was wearing T-shirt from Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam which was established 2 years later, in 1999. Bad research from producers, I guess. That was very emotional time to watch the flood on news in real life, real time. Poland, Czech Republic and Germany and other countries in central Europe had to deal with this power of nature. Earth sends us singnals from decades, to help it restore its natural beauty. Good that someone creates shows like that to remind how powerful nature is. Quite interesting tv series indeed...

This show tells a story of my town of Wroclaw, I was 17 years old when that happen and remember it so vividly. I remember the anticipation in the air, the fear, but also people saying "nothing will happen". All these conflicting feelings and messages have been portrayed so well in this show. 25 years after the tragedy, it brought all the memories back. I recognise the old footage intertwined in this show from news outlets, that's such a great idea to add it.

I love this show, because it portrays the tragedy really well, the politics and the family drama that all took place during that July. Sure, some of it is fictional, but each family I know in Wroclaw had their own share of drama, and while the show made some creative decisions, the spirit of that is just right. The town of Kety and the villages fighting for it is actually called Lany (south east of Wroclaw).

I gave this 10 stars because all the characters are incredibly believable, there is a great attention to detail to make Wroclaw look exactly like 1997, and I can feel the writers clearly took a great care to understand what people went through and portray all the stupid decisions that were made.

I remember reading an interview where one of the members of the HQ said to the men in the room "this discussion is all fascinating, but it should be taking place in an university lecture hall not here! Here we need decisions".

High Water shows the greatest ecological disaster after the Second World War. It's done with great authenticity and the actors delivered great performance. I was especially surprised by the sceneries of the high water situation in the city. You could believe that it has happened just now and there is no way out. It's really amazing to see it.

I find there are not too many series that extends this water catastrophe and the running of each episode is good too. So if you like this genre of movies check it out. If you want to see another top environmental disaster movie then watch the earthquake Hollywood film San Andrea.