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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 4406470, member: 833"] Started Shantaram on Apple TV. I really liked the book, and there have been attempts to make a movie out of the book for 15 years, with both Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe attached at various times. I thought TV was the better format for the show, and I was fine with Charlie Hunnam as "Lin", the lead. He looks the part. The book is an unwieldy mess of a story about the Bombay (now Mumbai) underworld of the early 1980's. The plot is all over the place and the book is too long, and yet I couldn't put it down when I read it. The reviews are pretty rough, but TV reviewers jumped the shark when the consensus of the first season of Succession was mediocre. They crap on everything new, and then jump on the bandwagon if a show takes off (see Succession). Some of the reviews are simply factually wrong, such as one review that was upset that the show was not shot in India, when much of the show was shot in India, just not Mumbai. That said, something is just missing through 2 episodes. The show isn't terrible, but it isn't grabbing me either. At first I thought the acting was bad, but when most of the actors are bad, maybe it is the direction and not the actors. Most of the characters come off as wooden and one dimensional. Author Gregory David Roberts wrote such a complex web of interesting characters in the book that I expected the TV show to be incredible. Elektra Kilbey is pretty bad as Lisa, who is one of the key characters, but maybe it is not her fault, because the actors that play several other key characters, like Karla, look like they are in a soap opera from the 80's. Charlie Hunnam is OK, but I think of him like I think of Patrick Swayze or Emilia Clarke. They aren't great actors, but they are just so appealing and likeable that you let it go. It is being directed like a melodrama when it should be chaos. I have only read about it, but Bombay circa 1983 should be an intense and vibrant experience. This was a city on the cusp of a seismic shift in both Indian history and the globalization of the world economy. That was captured in the book, where the city was the real star, with Lin just a narrator. In the show, the city seems like an Indian version of Cincinnati, in dull, flyover generica. You rarely see Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire, yet it is still a living, breathing presence in that movie. So far, Shantaram doesn't come close to replicating that energy. I hope the show picks up the pace because I have been looking forward to this show for a long time. [/QUOTE]

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