MOSAIC

Mosaic was made a series of an app sharing the same name created by Steven Soderbergh. Olivia (Sharon Stone) is a children’s book author and illustrator, and even though she’s rich as well as famous, she remains lonely. So, she chooses to mess with men and her new target becomes Joel (Garrett Hedlund), an artist-in-the-making who moves to live on Olivia’s property. However, her neighbour Michael (James Ransone) who’s allured by the beauty of her property and hires Eric (Frederick Weller), a con-man who later falls in love with Olivia. Unable to bear the guilt of tricking her like this, he resigns and confesses the truth to her after which she kicks him out and gets murdered by whom? Is what we have to find out.

It’s definitely a fascinating story and has appealing mystery. However, the deliverance in the series is slightly off-putting and the pace seems off track as opposed to how it was narrated in the app. There are also too many close-ups that, watching it on a larger screen other than your phones, would make one uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because it was compatible for an app first before being made into a series. Factors like these force one to ponder over whether it was good as an app only.

Soderbergh succeeded in creating a show and an app that would include all the elements needed in a detective show ever; suspects, evidence, alibis, motives and the theme of the show, memory.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

MAYANS MC

A spinoff of Sons of Anarchy, Mayans MC is about EZ (J.D. Pardo) who exits prison after spending many years as a result of killing a cop, entering Santo Padre’s motorcycle club. He keenly follows after Angel (Clayton Cardenas), worrying his father Felipe (Edward James Olmos), a well-known butcher and ex Mexican patriarch. At the same time, EZ’s trying his best not to come across his ex-girlfriend Emily (Sarah Bolger) who loiters in his life.

Putting the Mayans’ allegiance with the Galindo Cartel at test is a relentless rebel group. I think I forgot to mention that EZ also has eidetic memory. There is merely any character development, and characters seem to be moving without any emotion (no blame to the acting, because it’s great). Similarly, Pardo serves as a marvelous actor but its EZ that cannot catch up to him because his role still remains held tightly in the grasps of the writers. His intelligence, knowledge and astounding memory have not yet been exploited properly, taking away a lot of excitement on my half.

It tackles a lot of violence during its long running time, and I’d be grateful if it doesn’t approach sexual violence just for psychological pain because Mayans MC does not have any refined female lead to take on something like that.

I Don’t see the series doing anything that’ll really arouse any excitement amongst its viewers, but I sure hope it does or it’ll just be surviving through the fame of Sons of Anarchy.

Rating: 2 Stars

FOR THE PEOPLE

For the People welcomes a group of lawyers all of whom have a very annoying habit of talking too fast (I guess that’s what happens when you’re in a rush to get back to your so obviously inevitable relationship). See, that’s what the show lacks – subtlety. It’s not at all what I expected from Shonda Rhimes, who produced How to Get Away with Murder, one of the most amazing series I’ve watched to date.

It stars Sandra (Britt Robertson), a hard working public defender who maybe shouldn’t try that hard to stick deep into places she doesn’t belong, Leonard (Regé-Jean Page), the son of the senator who thinks that he has every right to disrespect others just because he is, again, the son of the senator. Cliché, really. Then we have Allison (Jasmin Savoy Brown) dating Seth (Ben Rappaport), which obviously creates a lot of problems as suspected. Remember folks, never date a colleague or you might see them at the other end of the court. Against you. It’s impossible to forget Jay (Wesam Keesh) and his naivety as well as Kate (Susannah Flood) with her seemingly emotionless and highly organised self.

The cases presented in the show are just so predictable, like you could tell right off the bat that it’s going to be about document leaking or whatever, and it kills the suspense. One thing that was tremendous was the cast. Page and his killer’s looks do well for the eye, and his constant running back to Susannah brings our attention to her and how well she goes along with the character assigned to her. I assume people would find it rather uninteresting due the lack of focus it gives to relationships even after hinting who’d end up with who, and with the heap of attention the lawyers are forced to give to their jobs.

I hope that For the People realises where it went wrong before it completely disregards the skilful cast assigned to it.

Rating: 2.5 Stars