The Swarm

This series wants so much! And I'd like to like what I see. But I do that to a moderate extent. This series should be, and I quote: Ecological thriller about the delicate interconnectedness between mankind and Earth. Incredibly exciting idea and many possibilities.

I will briefly summarize what I think this lacks: The "explanation" of what is about to happen becomes far too elaborate. I fall off along the way. Thriller? No. This is simply boring to watch, far too little action after two episodes. Good actors, yes, but a boring script and momentum are lacking here. There will simply be too much monologue/dialogue, and too little drama and events. I won't be following this one any further...

Some really grumpy reviews, here. Some people should ask themselves why they expect so much. Personally, if I like the concept, I can pretty much use my own imagination to fill the void and, in this case, the concept is an interesting one. 'The Earth fighting back' is slowly developing into a thought provoking genre. One that's highly relevant to today's global discourse; the earth will live on without us if we don't kill it first. If, like some others here, you need your movies/tv/music/art to do all the work for you, then yes, give it a miss. If not and you've got some hours to kill, give it a go 🤷‍♂️

The Bad: stiff and badly written dialogues, awkward voice acting, annoying accents that aren't even cliché like a lot of things in this adaption

The Good: an intriguing story about a biological/environmental threat and how to deal with it (different than your standard zombie apocalypse show) with the right amount of nerdiness to my liking.

The portrayal of the story's philosophical/spiritual aspects was executed too cautiously, imho and deserves more focus.

By the way: I hereby offer my services as voice acting coach for (German) actors.

Years of experience and a fine ear for subtleties. ;-)

A few scenes of activity split by LOTS of boring dialogue between characters so two-dimensional that it is hard to relate to them. The personal interaction relates to previous, unknown events which do little to add to the storyline.

Scenes filmed are very dark, even those shot outdoors. Unnecessarily irritating. The jumping from suggested location to another creates a discontinuity which shouldn't exist.

I forced myself to watch all episodes. Instead of saying "wow, that was great" I was left thinking that something was lacking and I felt unfulfilled as an audience. I hope there isn't going to be a follow-up series.

None of the critics like this series. I do! The book, which I read 20 years ago, was at the level of a penny dreadful, with amateurishly crafted action scenes copied from movies and implausible characters. All this is no longer present in the first three episodes of der Schwarm, or has been completely deleted from the script. No more military saving the world, no more Wolfgang Emmerich doomsdays on the screen. Instead, slow plot developments with small, subtle catastrophes. This makes you want more and is decidedly different from the usual German series you see on TV. And fortunately, different from the book!