HBO MAX may Euphoria. Netflix Sexual education. Even Czech Television remembered that there is a youth that it often neglects, so it produced for iVysílní TBH a Five years. Voyo, which so far has been betting on well-known personalities in terms of original content (Roubal, Iveta BartošováJosef Yield aka King of Šumava), wants to program SEX O´CLOCK to draw teenagers away from TikTok and turn them into subscribers. The ten-part series would like to deal with serious topics such as teenage pregnancy and its premature termination, late coming out or so-called revenge porn and slut shaming, while also entertaining.
Critic Jana Bébarová u Sex O´Clock positively highlights two things. One of them is that it is another work that is not protocentric: “I appreciate that similar to TBH, which is set in Brno, we get to Zlín, a regional city with a small-town mentality of the inhabitants.” The second of them is raising specific topics, but no longer grasping them and delivering them: “I appreciate that the issues of late coming out are brought up, but this line mainly functions as an excuse for awkward homophobic jokes. More problematic, however, is how uncritically they approach, for example, ‘rape culture’. It should be more clearly warned,” says Jana, who would like the possible educational potential of the work not to be neglected.
But her main problem is with what the critic Marek Slovák also agrees with. “Creators try to talk about teenagers with the lens of people in their late thirties or early forties,” pointed out Jana in a somewhat ageist way. And Marek elaborates on the criticism:These teenagers don’t talk or relate to things. In the off-screen comments, the protagonist refers, for example, to movies from the nineties, not to Marvel movies or anything like that. The scenes paraphrase American teen comedies from the turn of the millennium, esp Farts, farts, farts – for example, in the very first episode with the snooping of the girls’ locker room.” So the question is, who is the series for if it doesn’t say anything about youth, if at all, and rather confirms stereotypes because it bases its humor on them.
Most watched The Last of Us
THE LAST OF US is one of the most successful adaptations of a video game, which, given the poor quality of the others, is not that difficult. Originally intended for consoles, the pair of games were adapted for HBO (MAX) by Craig Mazin. A creator who, as a screenwriter, was mainly associated with comedies (Fire in Bangkok a The Hangover Part III) and parodies (Scary Movie 3 a 4, Superhrina), gained respect as the showrunner and screenwriter of the award-winning historical drama series Chernobyl. After him, he had a free hand in terms of choosing the next fabric, so he decided to The Last of Us, which, with its exploration of the limits of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world, has regained relevance in the (post)pandemic era. Viewership started at 4.7 million and in the last episode even exceeded eight million views, and only on the day of the premiere! It probably won’t surprise anyone that the creation of the second series has already been confirmed.
Jana, who is not a gamer, believes that the series deals very well with a number of topics. “It perfectly shows the clash of generations – old and new world – on the example of two central characters, when he is still from the old one, while she was born into the new, post-apocalyptic one. Along with it is shown the search for humanity in an inhuman world, in the case of characters who are not unambiguous, on the contrary, they are forced to do very questionable things in order to survive,” acknowledges Jana. And compared to Sex O’Clock, on the contrary, he highlights the representation of queer characters: “I especially appreciate the third part, which goes against the stereotype of gays as effeminate.” Nevertheless, the series is not without reservations with Jana: “The plot starts to slow down towards the end. Someone may be disappointed that some things are left unsaid, some lines are not properly closed,” which is due to the fact that at least the entire second video game part is still waiting for adaptation.
Even so, according to Jana, with whom Marek agrees, The Last of Us an excellent series to which she would give 90 %.
If you want to know if the movie Dragon’s Lair belongs together with The Last of Us to one of the few successful adaptations of games, listen to the podcast/watch the Ball Lightning vidcast. If you are also interested in how SkyShowtime, the latest new streaming service in the Czech Republic, is doing, you can listen to the second half of Ball Lightning.
