by Hudson Moura
Elite Force (GIGN) (Netflix) — Adrenaline by the Book
Created by Sylvain Caron and Julien Leclercq, Elite Force (GIGN) follows an elite captain of France’s GIGN, played by Tomer Sisley (Largo Winch franchise), through the kinds of extreme situations associated with the country’s top counterterrorism unit. The series checks almost every expected box: gruelling training, attacks involving children, bomb disposal, hostage situations, terrorism, internal rivalries, and family drama. It does all of this with a constant sense of urgency, solid casting, and considerable adrenaline. The problem is precisely that the series can feel designed around a checklist of high-stakes situations rather than around a particularly original dramatic vision. Still, Sisley has the physical presence and familiarity with this kind of action role to hold the material together, making Elite Force an efficient and highly watchable procedural thriller even when it rarely surprises. Formulaic as it may be, it works well enough that I am already waiting for a second season.
Rating: 4/5
Jogada de Risco (Globoplay) — A Fascinating World Wasted by a Weak Script
Created by Sofia Maldonado, Thiago Dottori, and Cauã Reymond, Jogada de Risco enters a potentially fascinating world of football agents, ambitious families, players’ addictions, prostitution, drugs, illegal betting, organized crime, and the constant negotiation of careers and money. At its centre is Maurício (Cauã Reymond), a former player turned agent who, together with his more morally grounded right-hand assistant Cris (Mariana Sena), tries to contain the excesses of his clients while conducting his own deals with figures from the criminal underworld. In that sense, the series recalls other dramas about talent agents, such as the French series Call My Agent!, starring Camille Cottin, or the British series Flack, starring Anna Paquin, although here the world of actors, artists, and celebrities is replaced by that of professional football players. Unfortunately, an enormously rich dramatic environment is reduced to a simplistic and often clichéd script. Players fall into familiar patterns of sex, drugs, greed, and scandal; characters frequently become caricatures; and the direction lacks the firmness necessary to impose coherence on so many competing storylines. Reymond has undeniable charm, but his performance is surprisingly limited, relying too often on the same gestures—most visibly, smoking almost continuously—as a substitute for greater psychological complexity. Most frustrating is the absence of strong dramatic hooks connecting and advancing the different plots. Jogada de Risco does not merely feel underdeveloped, it feels like a considerable narrative opportunity squandered.
Rating: 2.5/5
The Shards (Disney+) — Ryan Murphy Gets Lost in 1981 Los Angeles
Based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel and developed by Ryan Murphy, The Shards combines teenage coming-of-age drama, erotic thriller, serial-killer mystery, and a portrait of privileged youth in Los Angeles in 1981. Despite all these provocative ingredients, it rarely develops a strong hook capable of pulling the different elements together. The series clearly evokes the psychological and erotic thrillers of the period, recalling films such as Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, while the early reference to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining immediately establishes an atmosphere of paranoia, unstable perception, and uncertainty. The problem is that the blurring of reality and fiction, already present in Ellis’s novel, becomes even more confusing on screen. Instead of deepening the mystery or making Bret’s point of view more psychologically disturbing, it often weakens the narrative momentum and leaves the viewer uncertain about what exactly is at stake. There is also a curious emptiness beneath the stylish surface. The serial-killer plot, Bret’s homossexuality, his friendships, and the privileged Los Angeles environment should create a rich combination of desire, danger, and paranoia, but the different threads do not always reinforce one another. Murphy’s prolific career has always been remarkably uneven, and his name alone is no guarantee of either quality or originality. Here, the series has the appearance of something daring and provocative, but not always the dramatic substance to sustain it. The more interesting The Shards seems to be hiding underneath its own mystery: a city whose apparent freedom gradually reveals something darker. Unfortunately, that series never fully emerges.
Rating: 2.5/5
Furious (Disney+) — A Revenge Thriller Uncomfortably Close to Reality
Created by Elizabeth Meriwether and starring Emmy Rossum, Furious begins with the familiar cat-and-mouse structure of an FBI agent pursuing an elusive female serial killer. The series is loosely inspired by Bob Rafelson’s 1987 film Black Widow, starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell, which was written by Ronald Bass, who also serves as an executive producer on the series. But Furious pushes that premise into considerably darker territory. Here, the murders are driven not simply by financial calculation but increasingly by revenge, while the story’s involvement with sexual abuse and minors inevitably evokes scandals disturbingly close to contemporary reality, most notably the Jeffrey Epstein case and the broader networks of exploitation and abuse associated with it. This is precisely what makes the series both compelling and difficult to enjoy. Furious is exceptionally dark and often extremely violent, and there are moments when its fictional world feels too close to recognizable forms of real exploitation to function comfortably as entertainment. Its strongest quality lies in the moral instability of its two central women: both move toward their own ideas of justice until the distinction between victim, avenger, criminal, and investigator begins to blur. Yet for all its darkness and moral ambiguity, the series ultimately falls back on a surprisingly obvious and simplistic figure: the avenging female angel, a trope that feels less provocative than dated—almost like a return to the revenge fantasies of the 1990s.
Rating: 3/5
