To the satisfaction of its viewers, HRT got into trouble. After 'Black-White World', they allowed us to follow another good - even superb - domestic series on a daily basis, the second season of the crime drama 'Rest in Peace'. The series, just like in its first season, was excellently filmed, cleverly written, well-acted, and, unlike the first season, decently announced, so it attracted the same kind of attention. HTV is in trouble because, after this series, they'll have to offer us something at approximately the same level of quality.
When the 'Rest in Peace' season one started airing, I enthusiastically, based on the first few episodes, concluded that it was the top of domestic feature TV production and I did not regret that assessment for a moment. True, the series did not manage to maintain the level of brilliance of the first few episodes, but it was excellent until the very end, here and there slightly tarnished by charming offshoots of a Zagreb acting school that sometimes even boasts academic credentials. The problem with the first season, however, was that HRT, on which it was shown, advertised and announced it pretty badly, so that pearl of the domestic program remained relatively poorly noticed.
In the meantime, realizing that it has a medium at its disposal where it can be advertised without too much expense, HRT welcomed the second season of this series much more readily. Perhaps not as hysterically as in the case of 'Black and White World' (which, due to exaggeration, actually did the series a disservice), HRT lured the audience with teasers, so 'Rest in Peace II' landed on fertile ground. The series has been widely discussed on social media and in real-life since the start of broadcasting on Monday, and since it is not tied to any factography of past times, this time we are spared comments in style: the day Tito died was not such a nice time, the comments being mostly about the quality of the series itself and the comments are mostly positive.
Based on the eight episodes sent by Ring produkcija to reporters (one of the most generous screeners I’ve personally met), the positive comments are very well-grounded. Continuing the first season with the main character, journalist Lucija Car (Judita Franković), and the main topic of investigating the circumstances of the death of a group of people defined by life and troubles in a limited area, this time we no longer deal with the prison cemetery, but dark events in an industrial Istrian town. .Sent to the field to report on the mystical Istrian sacrificial cult and its leader, she accidentally discovers that the (fictional town) was sown with death by a former asbestos fiber factory, both ecologically and typically in transitional immoral curves.
The first season of this series was mostly set as a so-called procedural, solving one plot in each episode - a criminal case, a health crisis, a lawsuit, and the like. Thus, in the first season, although the links between the episodes did exist (they are even partially transferred to the second season), Lucija revealed a separate story about one buried prisoner or prisoner each time. The second season approached the story differently - although there are a dozen of those who rest in unrest, their deaths are investigated as part of a broader story about the Istrian town and its specifics, but also about the dark side of the transition policy and economy.
Filmed in the best manner of Scandinavian noir, polished to unprecedented proportions for domestic production, with a strong cast that, however, is criticized for a poor imitation of the Istrian dialect, the series again - somewhat more explicitly than in the first season - presents a brutally awkward view of things that have been happening in our country for about twenty years. For this occasion, even the excellent opening credits of Simon Bogojević Narath got upgraded, which now shows not only the animation of the dead rising from the graves, but also scenes from the political life of this unfortunate country.
If there’s anything to complain about in the series, then it is again occasional (but rarer than elsewhere) outbursts of amateur acting, or attempts to associate fictional characters with real ones (always quite unnecessarily pun that diverts attention from the plot ) and perhaps a bit of confusion in the first episodes, when neither the main character nor the viewers understand what the characters names are, or what's their goal. But given the clever unraveling in later episodes, the latter is more or less forgivable.
Judging by the response of the audience, the public feedback, and the objective quality of this series, HRT is now really in trouble. Contrary to the long-standing beliefs of lazy and stingy producers, domestic viewers are interested in 'more demanding' domestic content and cry for domestic series that will not make them uncomfortable. Already the second portion of the series that is shown every working day has sat very nicely to that underrated crowd and now they could ask their public service for more. And did they still get it? And is it at least on the trail of 'Rest in Peace' quality? Because we’re talking about a series that’s not just 'good considering what domestic series can be like'. We are talking about a series that even the Danes would not be ashamed of. It's just that the Danes, with their long-standing Borgenian democracy, would find it a little harder to grasp it.