chron

I am an IT professional, and an amateur at understanding politics.

Based on the premise, this should have been my kind of show. I like political thrillers. I like IT-related plot lines if they are realistic. The cast was a litany of A-listers - DeNiro, Jesse Plemmons, Lizzie Caplan, Joan Allen, and other good actors.

The writers apparently had no clue about how information technology or cyber attacks work. They had no idea about how the secret service works, and no idea how politics work. They apparently felt no need to contact anyone that did know something about our reality.

As a result, I ended up in "old guy yelling at TV" mode until I gave up halfway through the first episode.

I have visited the Zillow Gone Wild subreddit, and there are some genuinely interesting houses out there. My wife and I enjoy shows like House Hunters, and I thought it might be good "filler" programming when we are too tired to properly engage in a movie or television series.

Out of the gate, we were immediately bombarded by the over-affect of the host, Jack McBrayer. Not everything is "amazing" and is deserving a wow and OMG. Not everything the homeowner says is incredibly funny.

For some reason, the producer's put the series in a faker wrapper of a competition, with empirically absurd categories.

It's definitely not for me.

Technically, this series has a lot going for it. The acting is very good - especially from Billy Bob Thornton. The direction and cinematography are exceptional.

The problem is the exceptionally bad writing. The point-of-view is that of a petulant teenage male. There is not a single likable character in the series, at least for the two episodes I spent watching.

This shares the main problems I had with "Yellowstone," which is an immature and under-developed view of the way the world works. Apparently Taylor Sheridan has a penchant for mouthy women behaving in an unrealistic manner.

This could have been a success, but for me, it quickly became unwatchable.