I had previously rated this series 4 but changed my mind over the course of the series.
The show is of good make and scene setup which, with a slow but almost interesting story, is made watchable. There are many shortcomings nonetheless. Most of the characters are artificial, forced, hollow, exaggerated, and the dialogues mostly extravagant and out of place. Very often the lay people speak with an abundance of literary devices - a misguided attempt by many Iranian filmmakers to imitate the parlance of the commoners in the Pahlavi era. British officers speak with horrible accents that are mixes of Iranian, Turkish, and North American; the most repulsive one is Norman Wilson, a high-ranking officer of the British embassy, that speaks a weird accent of Farsi with occasional blurts of English phrases in his decidedly ridiculous accent! There are many historical goofs which I won't get into. If you could ignore all the shortcomings, you might still be able to enjoy the story and the visuals. The music is great. The ending title score is awesome. The same melody is also heard as the theme. The story is painfully slow but becomes more and more interesting towards the later episodes and truly culminates in the finale! Sir Wilson also makes more of an effort in the last episode, but is still far from a credible British accent. Rajabov has a better smattering of Russian too in the final episode. The song played at the end of the final episode is also epic.
The show is of good make and scene setup which, with a slow but almost interesting story, is made watchable. There are many shortcomings nonetheless. Most of the characters are artificial, forced, hollow, exaggerated, and the dialogues mostly extravagant and out of place. Very often the lay people speak with an abundance of literary devices - a misguided attempt by many Iranian filmmakers to imitate the parlance of the commoners in the Pahlavi era. British officers speak with horrible accents that are mixes of Iranian, Turkish, and North American; the most repulsive one is Norman Wilson, a high-ranking officer of the British embassy, that speaks a weird accent of Farsi with occasional blurts of English phrases in his decidedly ridiculous accent! There are many historical goofs which I won't get into. If you could ignore all the shortcomings, you might still be able to enjoy the story and the visuals. The music is great. The ending title score is awesome. The same melody is also heard as the theme. The story is painfully slow but becomes more and more interesting towards the later episodes and truly culminates in the finale! Sir Wilson also makes more of an effort in the last episode, but is still far from a credible British accent. Rajabov has a better smattering of Russian too in the final episode. The song played at the end of the final episode is also epic.