Forst: the Polish series that won on Netflix fascinates, but does not dazzle

If there was a world series, Poland already deserves a place. Not only because of its production volume, which little by little adds titles, but because the quality or impact of many of his series. In fact, almost 20 days after its premiere on Netflix -on January 11th- Forst remains firmly in the Top Ten of the platform. And not because it’s brilliant: perhaps, simply, because he knows how to capture… even if towards the end of the story he finds it difficult to hold back.

The fiction that is positioned in the fifth place in the viewership chart in Argentina It is based on a collection of books by Remigiusz Mróz -a young successful Polish writer and lawyer-, and proposes to follow the path of an unorthodox researcher.

The first three episodes – by the six he has, between 42 and 45 minutes each – they give no respite, but then the situations (which tend to repeat themselves in their formula) begin to loosen the rope. The story begins as a typical police case where the evidence invites and forces you to go in search of the truth. A naked and crucified body on the mountain is the first piece of a domino of suspicionshypothesis, official investigation and parallel investigation.

Why Victor Forst, the central character of this story, separate him from the case, but the man in the title is not a quitter. And he decides to put together the clues in his own style, in the shadows, protected by the same shadows as him. Forst is one of those dark and complex fictional creatures, the ones who hide more than they show.. And perhaps it is precisely here that the greatest strength of this production lies, filmed on the border between Poland and Slovakia.

Although in each episode we see how the investigation proceeds – or stalls -, it is above all the script that allows us to do so What is this man’s life like with doses of cynicism, melancholy, enigma and unorthodox methods?. But, at the same time, the owner of an interesting stubbornness linked to his training as a police investigator.

This impulse leads him to collaborate with a photographer and journalist, Olga (Zuzanna Saporznikow), with which he intertwines a society in the shadows, illuminated at the same time by the brightness of the snow of the Tatra Mountains, in that mountain range that serves as the border between the two countries. The photography and landscapes chosen as locations are another of the creations of Forst.

And on the podium Best of all is Borys Szyc’s performance as Viktorthe actor who knows how to use the palette of shades – always far from strident tones – to show it indecipherable.

Forst Not only is it beautiful, but it is also marathonable. Which What takes away the possibility of a “very good” is a certain obsession with the intrigue from which the story struggles to escape. Not to mention the final section of the maze in which more than one spectator must have been trapped.

File

Qualification: Well

Crime/Thriller Protagonists: Borys Szyc and Zuzanna Saporznikow Film script: Agata Malesinska Address: Leszek Dawid Problem: Six episodes on Netflix.