"Hereta Mou Ton Platano" is a Greek soap opera where 3 people visit their grandparent's village "Platanos" which causes a lot of misadventures to ensue. This series follows the trend of these daily shows having really bad writing. The stories are filled with so many contrivances and moments that could have easily been avoided if the characters were actually smart, to the point where a large percentage of episodes shouldnt have happened if the writing was at the very least competent.
The characters range from badly written, to annoying, to downright insufferable (like Kaliopi for example who is given increased screentime in season 2). The first episode can serve as an example of "how not introduce your characters" because when I first watched it, I found all the main characters unlikable in a bad way.
The dialogue is mostly bad or laughable, with the pinnacle being the line "illegal smugling" (which is hilarious because it implies that legal smugling exists). Also the series is filled with soap opera cliches like the "will they, wont they", the "character gets amnesia", the "liar revealed", the "misunderstanding" and many others and is so tedious. Another problem is filler which probably is 90% of the show's identity, because the episodes have to get to the 40 minute mark every day.
The script in general feels like a first draft and I am pretty sure it is. This show aired 5 days a week for 3 years and I understand that managing to write 170 episodes a year is tough on its own, let alone double checking what you wrote. That's probably the origin behind some of the most outlandish storylines. I have some sort of respect for the crearors for even finishing so many episodes. However that doesnt mean the series is good and it just shows the problem with this outdated style of making series.
From a technical perspective, while the cinematography is bland, with shots being mostly flatly lit and sometimes overexposed, it still looks better than some shows shot on soundstages and thats because of newer equipment. There is however a lack of quality control in the visuals, and audio, the funniest being an attempt at a car chase, which switches from tv cameras to pixelated drone shots for 3 minutes straight.
As for the "good" stuff, some of the actors surprisingly carry this show with their chemistry, the actors for Georgie and Theodore have good comedic timing and work well as a duo (I am pretty sure that half of their lines are partially improvised) and overall the humor is probably the most consistently decent thing about the show. There are 2 episodes that didnt annoy me as much as the others, one of which contains the grandfather's death which is the most substantive scene in the entire show (I kind of like it). Also Ilias is the best character of the series, the actor delivers a good performance and the storyline were he thinks he is about to die and tries to be a better person, despite how ridiculously contrived and stupid it is sometimes, its actually one of the better ones from the show.
In summary, "Hereta Mou Ton Platano" is a terrible series with bad writing that has some okay moments. The only reason I rated it a 3/10 instead of a 2 or 1 is because of the humor and some ironic "so bad it's good" enjoyment that comes from how stupid the stories are.
If you actually want to watch a good show from the same network I would recommend "Ta Kalytera Mas Xronia". It's way better written, shot and edited and while I have my problems with seasons 2 and 3, even their worst elements are better than this series.
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