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jrandolff
Reviews
Inside the World's Toughest Prisons (2016)
Unbelievable Reality TV
I only made it through one full episode (Costa Rica) of season 1, which was interesting and fairly entertaining. The episode showed various sections/blocks of the prison complex, and featured interviews with a number of prisoners and guards, as well as the Minister of Justice. . I turned off the second episode (Bogota, Colombia) when Raphael Rowe had to spend his first night in his cell, telling the audience how he could not sleep due to his "dangerous", pot-smoking cell mates possibly trying to kill him, mind you, in full view of the camera crew.
Had this series simply attempted to show an outsider's view of various foreign prisons, and real interviews with prisoners and guards, it might have been interesting. Pretending to actually be locked up, "fearing" for your safety, while being surrounded the entire time by a full camera crew and likely security is simply unbelievable and downright silly. Inmates on camera freely brag about being the drug dealers for their particular prison block, try to extort money from the host and threaten to kill him with a knife, if he refuses to pay. The host refuses to pay and turns to the camera assuring the audience that "these guys are serious".
I have watched other prison documentaries, where the host interviewed inmates, as well as guards and administrators, on camera. Prisoners always kept the answers short and to the point, never volunteered any additional information, and certainly never said or did anything incriminating while the cameras were filming. Had the host actually been "incarcerated" while being secretly filmed and recorded, this show might have had some entertainment value. Of course, neither the host nor prison officials would likely have agreed to those terms.
Bloodline (2015)
Started out as a 10 but ended as a 2 at best.
I generally prefer foreign TV series on Netflix, as their story lines and characters are more developed and much more realistic. However, I decided to give "Bloodline" a try and was very pleasantly surprised. I could not get enough of it for the first two seasons.
Unfortunately, starting with season three, the plot began to fall apart. The storyline and the actions of the characters became increasingly irratic, irrational and unbelievable. Worst of all, the second to last episode was utterly ridiculous. It seemed as if someone was told the day before filming to simply come up with a plot to fill one episode.
The final episode was a little better, but left too many questions unanswered. It apears that the producers tried to fit the saga's conclusion into one episode when realistically it required an entire season to accomplish.