Only Netflix can make 2 episodes out of 1 race. I've now spent as much time watching replays and made up stories about a single race than the race itself. What the actual fuck Netflix?! What do you think of us F1 fans? That we are stupid?
Also, besides all this, every single episode this season so far has felt like re-shuffled highlights of races with some minor catchy quotes from drivers or team bosses randomly put in between.
I was utterly bored throughout the episode and kept skipping through the highlights and seeing how many minutes there were left. I know sometimes, just sometimes, there are nice interviews or behind the scenes views for which I stick around, but apart from that it's utter shit. 1/10
Apart from Steiner and Binotto having some nice quality time, this episode is extremely skipable. No introduction on the new cars, new drivers, nothing. Only some hollywood style report on the Russian/Ukranian war and Haas ousting Mazepin. And the rest is a big DTS style highlights reel of qualifying and the race. I don’t need to watch DTS for highlights, this feels extremely lazy.
Drive to Survive, eat your heart out! This is how you make a documentary about the two best F1 drivers on the grid currently.
As a Dutch person, I never actually knew the story behind Fokker and the KLM, so that got me interested combined with the preview I saw. In that preview they mentioned this was one of the highest budget Dutch television series ever made, with lots of actual footage, models and CGI where needed. Without spoiling anything from the storyline itself, I can say that not once I noticed I was watching a CGI enhanced scene. Of course, once you know that CGI is being used you can easily guess the scenes in which it was used, but nonetheless it was extremely well made. The most important part is actually the acting and that's absolutely perfect.
The fact they used a younger and older Anthony Fokker and Albert Plesman (and their wives) was the stroke of a genius. Not only that, in one case the older actor adjusted to the younger and in the other case vice versa, either way they were so well cast and even better how it smoothly went from one to the other. It's a miracle that in such a small country (compared to the UK or US) the young and old Anthony Fokker look so much alike and also share the same traits both on and off camera.
The storyline isn't always true to reality, but it doesn't detract from it otherwise. Being a limited series, I can understand that they had to simplify the death of one of Plesman's sons Jan. In the series he simply just died during a flight, while in reality he died in 1944 while fighting in his Spitfire during WWII. I can see that some people will not consider this to be a good thing, but I do see the burden of explaining the whole WWII phase and as it's not about Jan, but rather his father, I get the fact they did want to show his grief upon losing two sons, but not wanting to extend a couple of episodes just for that.
Fun fact: Albert Plesman's son Jan had the nickname De Vliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) which coincidentally is where the name of this tv series came from, though in this case they called it Vliegende Hollanders (plural, Flying Dutchmen), obviously meaning Anthony Fokker and Albert Plesman.
Great tv show and although I don't often watch Dutch productions because of bad experiences in the past, this one was well worth it and has shown me that we can deliver production quality comparative to UK or US productions.
Rest in peace Anthoine! You will be missed.
Wow, this has to be the worst GoT episode period. First of all, everything was so dark that I barely saw anything. Most scenes were also done very sloppy and just with lots of movement so you couldn't even see what the hell was going on.
The story itself was also very thin, with huge gaps in how stuff can happen. I mean, how did Arya reach the Night King so quickly and unnoticeable while moments before she was near the Crypt and almost died handling a couple of white walkers. And how can it be that the army of the dead somehow obliterates the complete army of the seven kingdoms except the unsullied, which makes all of them join in as we know, but then just a couple of hundred of 'our heroes' are able to fight of all of them and most survive?
The biggest flaw is when Danaerys first was able to put the Night King into the flames, he then got out, raised the dead, her dragon got caught, Jon tried to kill him but was stopped by that army which he magically was able to fight off all hundreds of them, but just as he's about to die Danaerys comes along with her dragon again and somehow is able to put them all into a ball of fire again. Very conveniently not possible during the 2 minutes that Jon tried to track down the Night King. And then Arya somehow sneaks past everything and even the Night King doesn't notice (are you kidding me?) but just as she's about to strike him, he has one of his ultra reflexes, but fails to notice the Valaryan steel knife falling out of her left hand and into her right hand.
Damnit, ever since they caught up with the books and had to create the storyline themselves, it went downhill, but this was by far the worst episode ever. It's only because I 'invested' 7 seasons before and I know it's only a couple more that I will finish it, but otherwise this would be me saying goodbye to a series that started off as one of the better series in a long time.
No tension, filler scenes with absurd shaky and dark camera shots where literally nothing can be made out of, horrible plotting and a weird way to end with a The Pianist like score while action is going on. GoT has lost it, big time.
I'm 6 episodes into the Netflix documentary and it really showed for multiple drivers that they either put them in a bad light or explicitly did not show some a certain positive side. All because of a combination of bad editing and wrong decisions.
Spoilers below for episode 4:
Best example is in episode 4 roughly 10 minutes in when they show the Austrian GP. First of all, they state that Ricciardo needed to win to stay in championship contention, while neither Red Bull ever was of course. A little further when Hamilton pits they show Ricciardo and his engineer telling him that the gap to Lewis is only 18 seconds, edited to make it seem Ricciardo is battling Lewis for the win, while in reality he was continuously chasing Verstappen that race and it was Verstappen who then took over the lead.
Especially the part where "will he be able to get in front of Hamilton", "Hamilton's 1 second behind you" and "Red Bull suddenly smell a victory here today" was said by the engineer (first two) and Martin Brundle (last one). Again edited to make it seem Ricciardo was the primary man to be fighting for victory.
Right after that Ricciardo is retiring and they edit in Martin Brundle's commentary about Renault's sole car racing in 12th position, again completely ignoring the Renault powered car that's leading the race. I know Martin was only talking about Renault during that moment, but Netflix has made it seem as if all Renaults were very bad. To add insult to injury, not a single frame was spent on Verstappen leading the race or eventually winning it.
To me this example was totally about putting Renault in a very bad light, which they tried to emphasise by extremely focusing on the one Red Bull driver that had a PU issue that race and completely ignoring the Renault powered Red Bull that lead 2/3 of the race and went on to win it. That and the combination of ignoring a great on-track result of Verstappen/Red Bull in which they straight up beat Ferrari and Mercedes.
I also have a huge list of issues with this show, which I won't even call a documentary:
Sound editing is horrible. Sound effects are far too loud compared to speech, I've never in my life experienced such a huge difference. I've got a proper sound system with full size speakers and have never experienced that both voices are way too silent and at the same time the sound effects are too loud. In the end I opted for not getting an ear injury and lowering the volume based on the sound effects, which made the voices practically inaudible, necessitating subtitles.
This exposed the following issue: subtitles. Not even translated, just the English ones. But they are bad, very bad. Engineer to Ric: Radio Check. Ric to engineer: Rennie Check OK. Really Netflix? Really?! And this happens all the time, horrible.
Getting back to the sound effects. They've not only increased the loudness of certain sound effects, but also added a lot of fake noises at the same time: fake oohs and aahs all throughout and just listen in ep4 around 12:30 in when Ricciardo's engine fails. What's that ridiculous sound supposed to be? Jeez Netflix, thanks for ruining actual sound effects. This sounds just as convincing as when I try to imitate an engine blowing up, with my mouth.
A documentary should tell the story how it is, telling the facts. Not editing the order of certain commentary, interviews and race moments to their liking to make it come across the way they want. They also willingly let out major parts of certain stories that we all know about, for example: the fact that Perez and his management put FI into administration, ultimately helping the team to find a new investor (to which they already knew who it would be) and thereby saving the team. They completely ignore this fact and make it seem dramatic as if Ocon and Perez need to fight it out on track together in order to get the seat next year next to Stroll.
At this point I'm not even going to watch the last couple of episodes. It's not a documentary, facts are twisted, it's made completely about their own image that they want to portray and the sound is unbearable.
Not funny. At all. The first of all the episodes where I didn't laugh once.
And what's up with all the gay comedians all of a sudden? I'm not against that of course, but like half of all these comedians are gay all of a sudden so it stands out. It's not as if half of the world's population is gay as well, then it wouldn't stand out.
The only thing that made me laugh was the pay more rent joke. Other than that it was totally not funny. Likeable personality though.
Very slow start and story telling. The visuals are very impressive at times and the setting/story itself hits it right in the ballpark for me. However, the acting is mediocre at best and cringeworthy at times. The way the robot is introduced really has a family-friendly feel to it, which is nice. If the pace will be picked up I might stick around, but for now I have to see another 2 or 3 episodes to judge that.
Were it not for the final part with the prepped vehicles, I would've given this a 6. That final part is on-par with the best of these gentlemen, too bad it encapsulated into the worst Grand Tour episode ever (up until now of course ;-) ).
I'm certainly going to miss this family. Ending a show is never easy, but this was done very heart-warming and full of joy.
Oh man, what a tearjerker this is. After watching 12 Years a Slave when that came out, this is by far the most emotional film I've watched since. Great Japanese work, by really focusing on the details and the characters, not on the useless stuff besides that like most Hollywood movies do.
Apart from Stannis Baratheon dying, this season finale has shocked me in every other way. Yes, I intensely hate Cersei Lannister, but during her final steps, even I thought this was too much for anyone to handle. Then Jamie's cousin dying: I still can't figure out why she had to die, what's this going to bring us in season 6? But what the fuck happened in those final 5 minutes... I have now words for this, I'm still in shock. Why oh why did Jon Snow need to die? The favourite of so many people. I think I'll get sick again when season 6 starts.
Great to see you've put effort in creating this list. Thanks.