Bitter Lands

I could not wait for another episode! Now at number 119 I don't think I'm going to continue. The story is going in circles and became unnecessarily complicated. Leading characters disappeared struck suddenly by death! New one were introduced changing the whole atmosphere, too bad. Why not closing it, why continuing? I don't think I want to continue watching a dumb Zuleyha and the disappearing of Gulten and Sanye! Why Turkish actors are not bound to stricter rules when they sign up a contract?

During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, we both became hooked on this great television soap opera. We watched it on MTV Lebanon where it was dubbed in Arabic. In a time where American T. V. is at an all-time low when it comes to entertaining programming, BZC harkened back to the 1970s and 1980s when you had great dramatic shows such as Dallas and Dynasty.

The story about two families (the Yaman and the Fekeli clans) and their twists and turns was dynamite the first two seasons and a half. This was a show I didn't want to miss as it aired daily. Sadly, once they began killing off the major characters it started to lose its mojo. The 4th and last season was about these crime bosses involved with Julia and crazy Batul and her mother trying to destroy what was left of the Yaman family and it wasn't as good.

Regardless, this was a wonderful show while it lasted and provided us entertainment during the lockdown and beyond. Great characters that you cared about, the beautiful setting of Southern Turkey and some comedy made this a pleasure to watch.

I wish my Grandmother could have seen this show. The character of Hammine reminded me her.

It is very delicate to say why a Turkish romantic serie is different by other. In this case, a murder, a love story far by homeland and the beautiful performance of Hilal Altinbilek but especialy, Vahide Percin acting are, like the influence of Biblical story, are good motives for see it. Romance, drama and dark secrets as basic ingredients and as good pillars of story.

The story line is awful, the writer must have considered that the viewers iq is at least 80. No reasonable reactions is considered for the characters and the things happened.

I give seasons 1 and 2, 7 ratings but seasons 3 and 4 have many flaws that bring the ratings down. The dramatic twists are good most of the time but sometimes there are too many of them. The B- stories i.e., the relationships between the servants and field workers worked perfectly in seasons 1 and 2 but got boring along the way (seasons 3 and 4) Good performances and good character building in general.

The hospitalizations are too repetitive and cliché. Everyone who gets severely injured gets a cardiovascular stop and they get CPR etc. And come back again. Everything is predictable even the dialogs.

Bad face job along the way especially for Hilal, which is sad because her natural face looked more beautiful in the first season. She starts showing her feelings through her lips later on, which look fake. Her performance was much better in seasons 1 and 2.

It is good that Ibrahim Celikkol changes his acting style along the way and removes his fake smile from his face, and acts more seriously. The constant smile on his face in the first couple of episodes doesn't make sense at all.

There is a side-by-side refrigerator in the kitchen that actually came out in the 90s but they do their laundry in a very old fashion way. The washing machines came out in 1760 and were modernized in 1908. They were further developed in the 70s. I wonder why they wash their clothes the way they do in this TV show but use a side-by-side fridge in their kitchen.

One loses the tract of time in 'Bir Zamanlar Cukurova'. The dialogues show a lot of time has passed by but the babies don't grow up accordingly. In season 4 they celebrate Leyla and Karam Ali's 3-year-old birthday. From the beginning until Adnan's age in season four shows that 4-6 years have passed which is not as long to me as they express it in season 4.

Many crimes i.e., Ali Rahman's, remain unpunished. The relationship between Betul and Abdoulkadir does not make sense. I can't get it. Why does Zoleyha forgive Hakan? Maybe circumstances and things were different in the 70s? Now societies and legislation do not accept violence against women. To Zoleyka it is okay Hakan comes to her hotel room in Izmir in the middle of the night, wearing masks, and scares her to death. In conclusion, there are too many things that don't make sense to me in this show.