Stream It Or Skip It?
When is a mystery series frustrating instead of entertaining? When the detective is a brilliant jerk who seems to be the only competent investigator among the people he/she works with. But that’s not the only thing that makes a mystery frustrating; it’s when the mysteries themselves throw up a lot of red herrings even though the ultimate reveal can be seen a mile away. We get both things in this new Acorn TV series from Greece.
KOSTAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Shots of the shoreline on an island in the Aegean Sea. Dance music plays. Then we see a shot of a man reading while sitting on the beach.
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The Gist: Commissioner Kostas Charitos (Stefano Fresi), head of the Athens police homicide division, is vacationing with his wife Adriana (Francesca Inaudi), his daughter Katerina (Blu Yoshimi) and her boyfriend Panos (Daniele La Leggia). Panos is studying to be an agronomist, something that Kostas bluntly tells him doesn’t sound like a real thing to study in grad school. Panos is about to ask Kostas for Katerina’s hand in marriage when an earthquake sends them running to the beach.
The next morning, Kostas is called by the local police chief; a body that had been buried in the rocks near the beach was unearthed by the quake. It’s badly decomposed, and probably has been there for a few months; the fingerprints have been purposely burned off.
When he gets back to the city, he’s eager to dive into the case. So is Klio (Maria Chiara Centorami), the receptionist outside of the office Chief Nikolaos Ghikas (Luigi Di Fiore), who was reading up on American software that would reconstruct a face from skeletal remains. But Ghikas wants Kostas to look into the brutal murders of a young Albanian couple. One of Kostas’ deputies, Petros (Marco Palvetti), already arrested someone while Kostas was on vacation, but without hard evidence, they need Kostas to extract a confession out of him. That’s Kostas’ great skill, something his father, who used to be on the force, had as well.
He gets a confession, but it’s too fast for his liking, so he reopens the investigation, much to the chagrin of Petros and another detective, Thanasis (David Sebasti), who is so scared of his boss that he brings him a coffee and croissant every morning. When he’s confronted by reporters, one of the journalists, Ghianna Karaghiorgi (Beatrice Schiros), mentions there might have been children present in the house where the murder occurred, which is something none of the reports or photos mention.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Kostas is along the lines of Sherlock, The Chelsea Detective, and other shows where a quirky detective solves crimes in extended-length episodes.
Our Take: We’re supposed to believe that Kostas Charitos is a hard-driving detective who has an innate ability to get the most out of his staff as well as get confessions out of suspects. But all we see from Kostas in this first episode is a boss who berates his underlings, all of whom seem to miss obvious things during their investigations and act in fear of him. We also see a man who treats his wife poorly, as she has to beg him to give her money to buy some boots like she’s a 1950s housewife. He seems to hate his daughter’s boyfriend, although she doesn’t seem too keen on him either, to be fair.
It really doesn’t sound like the kind of guy we really want to watch solving murders. But some of his crappy behavior has roots in the rough relationship he had with his father, as we see in a flashback scene where the kid version of Kostas gets an earful from his father, who berates him much more than the grumpy Kostas berates those around him. He’s breaking the cycle, we guess, and there are moments where we see some humanity in him.
What we hope is that, as the first season’s four mysteries unfold, Kostas becomes less of an a-hole and more appreciative of his family and colleagues. We’re not expecting miracles, of course, but that transformation is the only thing that makes sense given how much of a jerk he is during the first two-hour mystery.
As for the mystery itself, there are parts of tis that are interesting, like Kostas’ interactions with Karaghiorgi and why she seems to have information the police don’t. It seems to take a left turn in the second hour, after Karaghiorgi herself is murdered, and it doesn’t sufficiently explain what happened to the Albanians. There are lots of scenes that give the viewer some neon-red clues about who did it, making the ultimate reveal not that big of a suprise.
We’re also wondering about the show’s tone. It starts off like it’s going to be a light, semi-comedic mystery, and then it gets really serious and emotional, especially in the second hour. The switch in tone seemed strange to us, as it didn’t feel gradual or earned, and we wonder if subsequent episodes are going to have the same issue.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After Klio gives Kostas a rendering of the dead man from the island, produced by the software she mentioned to him, he stares at it on his bulletin board.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Maria Chiara Centorami as Klio, who seems like she’s underappreciated by everyone but Kostas, and Francesca Inaudi as Adriana, who looks like she’s going to become increasingly independent of Kostas after years of being taken for granted by him.
Most Pilot-y Line: For some reason or another, this series — or at least the first mystery — takes place in 2009. Katerina mentions the year repeatedly to her boyfriend when she rejects his proposal, and Kostas’ phone is a candy-bar Nokia. But there’s no explanation of why this episode is taking place 16 years ago.
Our Call: SKIP IT. There is hope that Kostas gets better, given the fact that the series has a continuing storyline that might make its title character into someone worth watching. But the first episode’s mystery wasn’t well-written and the tone was all over the place, making us wonder if the show is really worth the time investment.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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