If you enjoyed the 1st season of Fargo then I highly recommend you give 'Arthur's Law' a watch. Very funny story with great writing, clever plot twists and really keeps you championing for poor Arthur.
Even though completely hopeless and desperate the character is easy to relate to and the story keeps you in suspense of what will happen next. I'm really hoping for a second season!!!
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glenn_gallagher15 January 2021
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smoratti9 February 2021Dark sad comedy about a perpetual loser getting mixed up with local criminals. Intermittedly very funny, sometime hard to watch, Very enjoyable
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jamsagave28 February 2021Definitely not the best of HBOs releases in 2020 but a fun story. I stumbled across this "late night scrolling" and thought the 1st episode was funny enough to finish the series and wasn't disappointed. I understand the 'Fargo' reference although no where near as good. Authur is pretty hopeless and the random accidents that keep you laughing are pretty far fetched.
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One can always hope digging deep into a streaming service's catalog will deliver a gem like "Umbre" or "Gomorrah." That's not the case here. Graced with an absurdly large, utterly unusable prosthetic lower arm that might have found a user in the '50s ... the 1850s, our German anti-protagonist presents a viewer the difficult task of suspending disbelief as said appendage repeatedly fills the scene if not screen. Add in an utterly unlikable wife that urged the insurance fraud effort that lead the lost limb, albeit under the gaze of a security camera it's likely an insurance fraud best practice to factor in and disbelief suspension is as unlikely as the prop shop mitt.
But wait, there's more! Dispatched to an unemployment office by his conniving wife to land a job able to underwrite her penchant for ordering useless electronic consumer goods like a robo window cleaner that gets confused and latches onto the ceiling (hey lady, I don't know maybe unplugging it might cause it to come down?) our friend with the plastic paw sits in an office and listens to its pregnant civil servant gush on in detailed metaphors about some sort of off-brand Kegel exercise seminar as I guess that's what female factotums in Germany do as taxpayers await their attention. When that call blissfully ends he wastes no time mentioning expanding insulating foam use that connotes his home is a of a size that the state will no longer help him with his rent, because what's a situation comedy without situations?
Like this one: nonplussed that his trip to the unemployment office has left him in worse rather than better financial shape due to expanding foam extrapolation, Arthurs espies a drinking establishment across the way where he proceeds for a beer, at which time he's befriended by a sweet lass that wants to be famous singer despite a jukebox singalong effort that demonstrates full well that is a Very Unlikely Thing (if someone can explain the English subtitles during the "la la la" portion of the song by all means fill in that blank, or lack thereof). His rapt reception of that wretched rendition leads to an uninspired bedroom romp, because sitcoms indeed need situations still, I guess.
It seems our lass with the gold heart is in fact the establishment's hooker and her, ah, business manager, after finding no cash left on the bed stand, proceeds to chase Arthurs down for the fee, catching him at home with his wife, where the situation devolves as that's what sitcoms do. Things come to blows, the pimp produces a pistol, a situation Arthurs resolves by thrusting a can of the offending insulating foam into the pimp's mouth and filling orifices from the oral one in with expanding goo, leaving Arthurs and wife a body to dispose of because sitcoms apparently need situations more than comedy.
We aren't even to the end of the first episode yet, though describing how pitching a pimp's corpse through a warehouse skylight and on to a pallet of insulating foam cans furthers things would likely leave me huffing the stuff myself just to be spared explicating yet another ersatz situation. Who knows, perhaps this is a sublime post-modern masterpiece where the ham-fisted excesses are in fact metaphors missed by those of us who expect things like, wit, subtlety, and lack of artifice in what we view. If contrived comedy floats your boat perhaps this show is for you. If that is something you'd rather avoid, allow me to give you a hand. -
random-7077819 February 2021This has some dark humor, but it is highly repetitive and obvious. almost "schtick." It has none of the subtlety or irony of Fargo.
Overall there is a dumbed down preachiness that pervades. The acting and often dialogue are really often just awful as well.
If it is the golden age of television, Germany is still in the stone age.