Cure your insomnia with the “countdown” of Prime Video | TV / Streaming

The first series of streaming services never broadcast in the United States was the dark and without restraint “House of Cards” in Netflix. His arrival led the idea that these new platforms could offer stories and an execution that competed with that of cable pillars like HBO and Showtime. Prime Video experienced an unequal beginning, with series like “Bosch” and “Alpha House”, but won distinctions and acclaimed for “One Mississippi” and “Transparent”. For a certain time, the collective production of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon provided a television which seemed beyond the scope and interests of the television broadcast.

This gives me no pleasure to point out that the confirmed death rattle of this time was recorded, in the form of the surprisingly generic “countdown”, created and written by Derek Haas, now broadcast on Prime Video. Haas is best known for its NBC franchises centered on the city, notably Chicagos “Med”, “Justice”, “PD” and “Fire”. In this new effort based in Los Angeles, Haas created something so dull that it took two large glasses of strong and not diluted cold beer to cross a series without discernible history, character development or sense of goal. Haas received the creator / story / written by credit on more than 800 episodes of TV Broadcast, so it is difficult to say what is worse: that he cannot write a dialogue or characters, or it is the best he can find.

Prepare your bingo cards, we enter the procedural stereotype police: “countdown” concerns the police, but not everyone is a cop. Some are DEA agents, some are FBI agents and everyone is a toughness. Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles) is an arrogant cowboy, without fear of going under cover in the state prison, but dodges the treatment of his glioblastoma, discovered nine months ago. Do not worry, however, his cancer does not damage his succulent hair, and he is unable to reveal and crush his SUV during car prosecutions. The agent of the Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho) is presented in a montage where she beats bad guys holding her hostage, while a heavy (terrible) rock song flourishes in the background: “Girls cannot play the guitar / It is biologically impossible.”

Evan Shepherd Impatient and inexperienced (Violett Beane) is the office jockey – sorry, cybercrime expert—The quantico which receives exactly ten minutes in total of the development of characters in 10 hours of television. But she behaves better than Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu) and Keyonte Bell (Elliot Knight); The background of the first is nonexistent, but he has a beautiful woman and two adorable children, while the second vaguely mumbles on the heritage of his father. All five are recruited by Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane, Selé with absolutely nothing to do) in a federal working group which must find the members of the cartel who murdered a border and a customs agent.

Cartel members make a lot of threatening and brilliant but few others; The other bad guys, with plans with alcohol and harmful plans for revenge against the United States, are all Bélarus, which never lacks a chance to calmly move away after setting fire to / exploding a car, an apartment or a building. No one approaches the villain in chief until the season is almost finished, so for more than 8 hours, the casting only pursues a suspect in the next. In the event that it does not seem boring enough, the story moves between the current investigators and the past sins of the villain, which only amplifies the confusing and aimless nature of the story.

Since the writing is execrable – a set of set is stolen directly in the first season of “Slow Horses” and that the sterling dialogue includes gems such as “I am his life curator, and I left him drowning” – what are the actors to do? Everyone is perfectly styled from the dances around their faces while they recite an inert dialogue which is always structured in the same way: first, two characters speak of business, a lead, a method of investigation or a suspect, then to hesitate with hesitation a personal anecdote, to indicate that these cops are humans, after all. If I had had energy, I would have grove my eyes.

As for the music, imagine the worst dive bar that you have ever been, or think of these DIY vintage car repair videos on YouTube – this is where “Countdown” draws its musical clues. Drops of noisy, noisy, but completely empty rocky and metallic needles, somehow amplify the hollow nature of writing and direction. The design of production does not exist; A large part of the series is turned outside in different districts of Los Angeles, and when it enters inside, there is almost no decoration defined to speak; The HQ of the working group could be an accounting office, or even the staff rooms of a Kumon center. Viewers who know “NCIS” or “CSI” will quickly realize that there is not a single beat here, visually or musically, that we have not seen before. (The average boomer will not be able to distinguish between this and the diffusion series to which they nods each evening.) Sometimes it is good if It’s well done. But the “countdown” is more lazy, but also more swollen, than the slow zombies of “28 years later”.

None of Haas’ creative decisions makes sense to me. If Prime Video cut me off a check to make a television program, I would go to the ground to make sure that it was the best possible, and certainly none of my efforts would be devoted to the creation of television which seemed fresh in 2002. I often compare television series at the entrances to a restaurant menu. My ideal plate of food / television series is delicious, which changes life, something that questions my perceptions and makes me look at the world differently. I know that this will not always be the case, so at least, I expect flavor, flair and food. “Countdown” means that Soylent Green looks like starry by Michelin.

Whole series projected for examination.