Szerelmes Prága

What happened to the HBO touch? Oh, the Europe branch. It's appalling how much it rustles paper and the acting is totally weak. Sadly, I was looking forward to it. Actually, all of it: Aňa, Prague, and the locations. But I was not looking for the fact that instead of a script, it features situations that make no sense. Aňa Geislerová is bored in her role, and Anna Polívková caricatures something that doesn't need to be caricatured. I have absolutely no idea why Hynek Čermák should play a superman, and Jitka Čvančarová should return to a different series and stand in the corner and be aesthetic, while Jana Kolesárová is sure to impress the local lesbians. The functioning of the older generation, which features the faces of Hanzlík, Švandová, and Gýrová, is a chapter in and of itself. Despair and ruin. There’s also a little PR gem at the end, only they apparently managed to post a total spoiler of the entire series finale as the first promo photo, but who cares, right? I managed to survive sitting through one episode. (2018.07.07)

Season 2 is pretty bland. The characters have moved on with their lives but to no purpose, and Prague is snowed in. I had hoped that it would be somewhat less irritating, but again, it wasn't. The only positives remain the unusual lesser-known beauties of Prague (Holešovice, Libeň), and although the enthusiasm for hanging out by the Vltava River has somewhat diminished, it of course hasn’t disappeared completely. What more can I say? Aňa plays her Šárka as if she were interpreting her Elle columns, her partner probably fell from Mars, and the relationships at the beauty center workplace are so horribly off that no existing adjective can be used to describe it. The storyline set in the mountains seems to have come out of a dream of someone who saw Snowdrops and Aces again before falling asleep and didn't know what was good about that film. "Worst Performances" would be a great category for awarding Czech acting raspberries. Too bad that's not happening. It would be a tough battle, especially between Krobotová and Majer. Or perhaps between Polívková and Čermák? I'm relieved that there were fewer episodes this time around, although if there's going to be another return of this format, I'd ask for only five-minute webisodes of Aňa sitting on the vine with Kolesárová. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. (2018.07.07)