Whoever came up with the premise of Comrade Detective deserves The Order of Lenin. It's a sublimely clever concept for a TV series. Just reading the description was enough to make me chuckle. But right off the bat I realized the creators had made a giant miscalculation. It's a flaw on the most fundamental level: Comrade Detective doesn't understand its purpose. It's not so much that it misses the mark, but rather at which mark is it aiming? Parody? Satire? a semi serious drama? From an aesthetic level it's entirely unconvincing. Yes locations are appropriately authentic but the production itself is too slick, too polished. Comrade Detective is glaringly western in appearance. It doesn't look like a program that would exist in the 80s...forget about Eastern Bloc Hungary. The production value would have been atrocious and to western audiences completely bizarre. This show looks far too recognizable. There is satire but it broaches far too infrequently. One character questioning why another character would want to read a book when chess is on the television is, in theory, very funny. In execution, it feels like we're being thrown a satirical bone to gnaw in for a while. There are brief glimpses of the potential Comrade Detective had to be a scathing and laconic indictment of both Capitalism and Communism...but it never goes all in. It takes itself too seriously to succeed on any level. Since the crappy 80s buddy cop genre is basically an American invention, one that exists circa 1983 Hungary would have to be a rip-off. I think that's probably how the show was originally conceived but they appear to have chickened out. Ask yourself, what would Miami Vice or Lethal Weapon look like behind the Iron Curtain? If the Communists reverse engineered them and repackaged it for their own citizens. Comrade Detective should have been an absolute comedic gold mine. But instead we're left with a dog chasing it's own tail. What a waste!
Review of Comrade Detective
