I can't even write a coherent review, just a series of observations.
1) The only good actor in the show is the leader of the Chinese gang from "Sons Of Anarchy", who plays a CIA agent here and has actual presence in the scenes.
2) It's painful to watch actors struggle with bad writing, I.E. when someone casually recites their autobiography to another character in unusual detail while it's actually aimed at you, "the dumb viewer".
3) The actors don't behave like worn-out, savvy spies, but rather like the over-emotional, neurotic types from "Grey's Anatomy". Their continuous survival is not believable in the slightest. So the "good guys" are the hand-wringing emotional types. The "villainous" ones act like villain caricatures from a comic book, with the evil smirking and worn-out clichés. There's no subtlety here, and as result, no tension.
4) I grew up in Soviet Union. In "The Americans" show, nearly all "Russians who need to speak Russian" were native speakers, who used natural turn of phrase - and it mattered. Their presence was more natural, even if you do not understand Russian, simply because the actors were being, more or less, themselves. Chances are, most of these actors remember living in USSR.
Wisely, "The Americans" kept its leading actors, who are not speakers, from ever speaking in Russian, and it fit with the plot.
"Allegiance", on the other hand, is mostly filled with actors who are just reading phonetic Russian from cue cards. This is standard fare for American TV and film, but in a show CENTERED around Russian speakers, you really gotta up your game, no?
5) "The Americans" is tense because it takes place at the height of the Cold War. "Allegiance" tries to generate the same tension in modern times, and that doesn't work.
Yes, Russia is not a good place to live. It's got problems with freedom of speech, mafia, corruption, treatment of minorities, and even a degree of tyranny.
HOWEVER - it is not a closed-off system like the USSR. Their Internet isn't self-enclosed and heavily filtered like in North Korea. You can actually travel IN and OUT. The information, more or less, flows freely. There's no more need for tuning into "illegal" Western radio stations to get the truth.
We are NOT in a Cold War - far from it - despite the American administration's continuous bungling of relations with Russia and petulant and hostile behavior toward Putin, all the while they turn around and get cozy with Cuba(!), designated by the U.S. Department Of State as a state sponsor of terrorism - one among 4.
Russia is not among those 4 countries - Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
These are different times. The setting doesn't fit reality. This show could've as well been anti-Russian propaganda, sponsored by the Obama administration. State-sponsored television is, after all, a very familiar sight to those of us who grew up in USSR.
6) The ripping-off of "The Americans" isn't a theory, it is fact. The show is based on a premise taken from key plot development from "The Americans" season 2 finale.
It even uses a similar-colored, similar-sized and placed font for Russian translations, so that a person tuning in during the middle of the show, could perchance mistake it for "The Americans" and keep watching.
Ugh.
1) The only good actor in the show is the leader of the Chinese gang from "Sons Of Anarchy", who plays a CIA agent here and has actual presence in the scenes.
2) It's painful to watch actors struggle with bad writing, I.E. when someone casually recites their autobiography to another character in unusual detail while it's actually aimed at you, "the dumb viewer".
3) The actors don't behave like worn-out, savvy spies, but rather like the over-emotional, neurotic types from "Grey's Anatomy". Their continuous survival is not believable in the slightest. So the "good guys" are the hand-wringing emotional types. The "villainous" ones act like villain caricatures from a comic book, with the evil smirking and worn-out clichés. There's no subtlety here, and as result, no tension.
4) I grew up in Soviet Union. In "The Americans" show, nearly all "Russians who need to speak Russian" were native speakers, who used natural turn of phrase - and it mattered. Their presence was more natural, even if you do not understand Russian, simply because the actors were being, more or less, themselves. Chances are, most of these actors remember living in USSR.
Wisely, "The Americans" kept its leading actors, who are not speakers, from ever speaking in Russian, and it fit with the plot.
"Allegiance", on the other hand, is mostly filled with actors who are just reading phonetic Russian from cue cards. This is standard fare for American TV and film, but in a show CENTERED around Russian speakers, you really gotta up your game, no?
5) "The Americans" is tense because it takes place at the height of the Cold War. "Allegiance" tries to generate the same tension in modern times, and that doesn't work.
Yes, Russia is not a good place to live. It's got problems with freedom of speech, mafia, corruption, treatment of minorities, and even a degree of tyranny.
HOWEVER - it is not a closed-off system like the USSR. Their Internet isn't self-enclosed and heavily filtered like in North Korea. You can actually travel IN and OUT. The information, more or less, flows freely. There's no more need for tuning into "illegal" Western radio stations to get the truth.
We are NOT in a Cold War - far from it - despite the American administration's continuous bungling of relations with Russia and petulant and hostile behavior toward Putin, all the while they turn around and get cozy with Cuba(!), designated by the U.S. Department Of State as a state sponsor of terrorism - one among 4.
Russia is not among those 4 countries - Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
These are different times. The setting doesn't fit reality. This show could've as well been anti-Russian propaganda, sponsored by the Obama administration. State-sponsored television is, after all, a very familiar sight to those of us who grew up in USSR.
6) The ripping-off of "The Americans" isn't a theory, it is fact. The show is based on a premise taken from key plot development from "The Americans" season 2 finale.
It even uses a similar-colored, similar-sized and placed font for Russian translations, so that a person tuning in during the middle of the show, could perchance mistake it for "The Americans" and keep watching.
Ugh.