This is the first tv show from my own country that I've seen that has beautiful cinematography, artistic vision, a good score, extravagant sets and great costume design, but I only gave it 3 stars, because without these points there's basically nothing left that's praise worthy. The idea for this show is quite interesting but sadly it was just poorly executed. The characters are both unlikeable and one dimensional, you simply don't care for any of them. The choices made especially by Rosa are just strange and unrealistic. Why would you join an association that you know nothing about and which your good friend is terrified of? Curiosity? The chances she keeps talking about? She sure didn't know about the chances it could give her before she joined. Then you have her family, she suddenly lives in Ares' headquarters (?) with no expenses which is already weird but what about her dad? His daughter suddenly doesn't live at home anymore and she acted very strange in the hospital, wearing clothes completely opposite of what she would normally wear and she's with a strange woman her dad most likely has never seen, and he just doesn't do anything? Lets her go and doesn't call the police? It's extremely unrealistic, after watching the entire season his reasoning is still unclear and irresponsible especially since he knew about the association. I assume this show never meant to be realistic since it doesn't make sense culturally -and honestly doesn't make sense overall- but some things are almost laughable which is not a good sign since this show seems to take itself extremely seriously. The acting is a typical dutch standard: plain awful. Somehow we can't seem to perform acting wise in this language since it all sounds robotic and awkward. This also goes for the dialogue, nothing that was said had any value at all and it went nowhere. There are barely any explanations for events, probably for the purpose of mystery, but it just makes this show look pretentious and it shows bad writing. I have to say I was very interested when I saw the trailer since most dutch movies and shows are awful romantic comedies and for me personally, they're all unwatchable. So this seemed promising since there's not really anything out there like this show from our country and because the cinematography looked good for the very first time. But good camera work doesn't make up for the lack of plot, logic, bad acting, useless dialogue. I'm very disappointed, this could really have been something with a good script and solid directing. However this is still a step in the right direction after years of those "comedies". Hopefully there will be some improvements in future shows.
Review of Ares
