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8 Days is so-called because there’s 8 days left until the world ends… Well, it’s a German drama so it’s actually called Acht Tage, but anyway….
A comet is due to hit the planet in just over a week, and all efforts to bring it down have failed. Of course, if they watched The Simpsons, they’d see that it’ll actually just be burnt up into a small rock and affect nothing… except Moe’s Bar, perhaps.
On the plus side, it highlights just how much “man-made global warming” is a complete load of bunkum, and since they know the world’s about to end, all bets are off, and so all laws can be broken. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, as you’ll discover, leading to a sense of the extremes that some people will go to when their lives are literally on the line, and they’re completely out of options.
Early on, there’s still bartering going on about making money over giving a family safe passage to somewhere, but does money really matter now, when it won’t in just a few days. Plus, there’s a man who insists he and his wife stay in an basement panic room, with him coming across as much of a nutter as John Goodman’s character in 10 Cloverfield Lane. In addition, there’s lots of looting going on, but why would the police even bother when they won’t have a job in a few days?!
And as for the rocket mission which failed to bring the asteroid – known as Horus – down, did actually it really happen? The news doesn’t think so.
On the downside, the comet will hit a particular region of France, and wipe out the whole of Europe…. but look on the bright side: we’ll never have to hear the word “Brexit” on the news again(!)
I’ve also seen the second episode, and that’s intriguing as it gives some backstory to some characters, and goes back to 40 days before the proposed end of the world, at the time when the announcement was first made, so in some circumstances, you’ll look at them in a different light.
I love a good ‘end of the world’ drama, and this is great stuff. I also enjoy foreign-language drama, and as long as you don’t mind subtitles, you’ll get on fine with this, but a lot of the dialogue is fairly standard, and if you miss a line or three here and there, you won’t miss anything vital.
The scheduling of this series is odd, though, because it’s on tomorrow and Wednesday night at 10pm, and then next week, episodes 5 and 6 are on Tues night/Weds morning at 12.35am, with the final two episodes on the Weds evening at 11.30pm.
Then again, the first two episodes are actually on tonight/tomorrow morning at 2am, so that is the premiere time. WEIRD!
8 Days begins tomorrow on Sky Atlantic at 10pm (well, tonight at 2am), and it’s available to pre-order on DVD, ahead of its release on January 6th 2020.
Episodes 1 & 2: 8/10
Series Directors: Michael Krummenacher, Stefan Ruzowitzky
Series Producer: Florian Kamhuber
Series Writers: Peter Kocyla, Rafael Parente, Benjamin Seiler
Music: David Reichelt
Cast:
Susanne: Christiane Paul
Uli: Mark Waschke
Leonie: Lena Klenke
Nora: Luisa-Céline Gaffron
Herrmann: Fabian Hinrichs
Marion: Nora von Waldstätten
Klaus: Devid Striesow
Deniz: Murathan Muslu
Egon: Henry Hübchen
Robin: David Schütter
Jonas: Claude Heinrich
Elvis: David Bredin
Carsten: Luc Feit
Matze: Ben Hartmann
Ben: Thomas Prenn
Jens: Sebastian Achilles
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.