The Singer is the worst scripted show I ever watched

I went into this series completely blind. I haven't seen a trailer nor even knew it existed for that matter. But, it randomly came on the TV after Twin Peaks was on so I decided to give it a watch. And thus I had suffered through all 11 episodes in the first season. It sounded like an ok-ish premise. A supernatural thriller about curses plagueing an up and coming music star's life? Not very original, however, it could have ended up being decent I suppose. Boy, was I wrong about pretty much everything I've mentioned thus far. This is hands down, the worst piece of scripted television I've had to put up with, so this is going to be equal parts a review and a warning to all those who might think about possibly giving this show a chance. to quote one of my all time favorite books: Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

As I mentioned in my review of the espionage drama Civil Servant, I believe that Serbian shows can be really well made (for example The Black Wedding and Elite) and even downright spectacular (like Besa, which, coincidentally shares one of it's lead actors with this putrid abomination), however, the vast majority that I've seen were either bad or just plain awful (like the afframentioned Civil Servant, South Wind and Balkan Shadows). And, whilst this show did have potential (and seeing how content inspired by the fictionalized versions of the Vlach magic has worked in the past with the afframentioned supernatural thriller The Black Wedding), I'm incredibly sorry to say that it spectacularly manages to fail on absolutely every level and that's really saying something, given how awful South Wind was. This terribleness should come as no suprise given that the Serbian director Predrag Antonijević has already proven himself to be a master of terrible content, having worked both on the ludicrously bad period film Dara from Jasenovac (Dara iz Jasenovca) and (joining us for a third time) Civil Servant (Državni službenik). I'm still planning on checking out his most popular series, the crime thriller My father's killers (Ubice mog oca), but, judging by the quality of his previous works, there's no reason to believe that it will turn out well.

Alright, enough of this yapping, let's listen to my whine about the actual show for a bit, shall we?

(1) The Writing

The whole script of the show feels like a straight up adaptation of a first draft. Very dry, empty and soulless, populated by tons of plotholes and underdeveloped characters and storylines. It feels rushed, dull and seems to try it's hardest to be as cliche, annoying and flashy as possible. Now, there's nothing wrong with cliches or being flashy and not every supernatural drama on the planet needs to be the next Penny Dreadful, but, if you actually wanted to tell a satisfying, engaging and all around well made story, I assume you would have put far more effort into doing so. It feels like Antonijević took his daughter's bad horror story, added in some sex, nudity and swearwords, amped up the violence factor and voila.

I, as a matter of fact, do have a few theories of my own as to why the writing of the show was so bad.

I feel like the main reason behind this was that the creators and writers of the show (Antonijević, alongside his equally terrible scriptwriting cohort Nataša Drakulić) had made enough succesful films and TV shows that production companies Telekom Srbija (responsible for the majority movies and shows there, both solid and terrible ones) and Dandellion Pictures thought that they don't require any interference in order to make a smash hit, which they did, given that a second season was greenlit not long prior to the premiere of the first. So, consumed by their ego and given power, they went all the way with it, and, without any shred of creative control or studio interference, they created an absolute blunder.

There is also the option that the failure of the show wasn't the fault of the creative duo, reminding me a lot of the situation with the second season of the HBO mystery thriller True detective (considred to be the worst season of the whole thing). In the case of TD, it's first season (which holds a firm spot in my top 10 favorite shows of all time) was a smash critical and commercial hit for the network, which immediately greenlit it for a second season. The series' creator, Nic Pizzolato, was thus forced to rush his first and second drafts of the season 2 screenplay leaving us with a bland, rushed and undercooked final product, deemed by many fans to be worst season of the entire series (however, thankfully, Nic was given more control over season 3 which returned this cult classic back to it's footing). Perhaps the same thing happened here? Maybe Antonijević and Drakulić really did intend to tell a potentially great story, but were rushed by the two networks and production companies to pump out as much content as possible before the series even dropped on the air? I couldn't find any info about it, so I guess my esteemed readers will have to remain as much in the dark as I am regarding this matter.

But, what makes the writing of the show so bad?

Well, it's the obvious reasons: it's cliche (but not the good/fun kind), feels a bit cheap, dull and amateurish, not to mention that every single character was so incredibly annoying that I wanted to bash my TV with a Mjollnir and was counting down seconds before the end of each episode just so that I don't have to look at those disgusting abominations for atleast a day.

However, the thing that bothered me the most was the identity crisis the whole thing had.

At some points it wants to be a dark supernatural mystery thriller based around fakelore and urban legends surrounding the magic of the Serbian ethnic group known as the Vlachs (althought, according to a Vlach aquaintance of mine, the stories of Vlach black magic are nothing but pure hogwash, mockery and, even, deliberate propaganda, but this is fiction, so I'll let the accuracy boat go for a bit), but then at other points you're watching this dull drama about a young girl's rise and fall in the world of the turbofolk music industry.

Now, I'm not saying one can't blend genres. This has worked out many times in the past in many pieces of media, to equally good, bad and mid-level results (for example D&D: Honor among thieves is a fantasy heist movie and it's absolutely fantastic despite mixing two genres which are, usually, tonally and stylistically different). However, the problem with The Singer is that it doesn't know how to blend these two different styles well in any way. The whole thing ends up coming across as a jumbled, wild, over the top mess that doesn't deliever on either of it's two possible spectrums. So,we have an underwelhming supernatural thriller mixed with some uninteresting personal drama and, voila, the show perfectly passed a test determing the levels of shit existing within it (those being sky high).

(2) The Direction

For all of the trash he's been involved with, I have to admit, Antonijević is objectively a talented director when it comes to both films and TV shows, and even when he isn't sitting the the chair he can outsource this job to skilled individuals. Whilst I can't speak for the talent of the pair he picked to direct this project (Igor Đorđević and Miloš Kodemo) given that I hadn't seen any of their previous film and TV works, I, however, do have to say that the end result is far from satisfying. This isn't surprising given that, despite them having quite a long decades spanning filmography, there's no references which seem to indicate that they had done some directing work prior to taking the offer to work on The Singer, having worked mostly as either camera operators (Kodemo) or actors (Đorđević). And, yes, I'm aware that not many people make great works of art on their very first dip into new waters, however, they were indeed chosen to do this part of the project, accepted that offer and didn't attempt to fix any of the problems the series had during it's first season run, so, I still feel it is my right as a critic to criticise a bad piece of media for being exactly that.

The direction of the show is very sloppy, oftentimes feeling like an incompetent thesis film. I know it's the pair's first project and all, but wouldn't you want your first try at something new to be something actually worth watching, remembering and putting on your resume? Or is there something about directing which I'm not familiar with?

I would say the cold open of the first episode (titled The beggining of the end or the end of the beggining?) was hands down the worst (or should I say best?) example of. The shaky cam doesn't make the sequence feel realistic, in fact it makes it seem too obviously fake, and the the two scenes which are spliced together and forced to blend in (an elderly woman performing a ritual and an elder doctor dying of heart failure) feel so tonally, styleistically and atmospherically different that you would swear they were directed by individuals with two completely opposing views of the script.

If it doesn't look outright terrible, it looks incredibly generic and bland. A lot of these scenes don't feel like they belong in a supernatural drama, but rather a low effort daytime soap made possible by studio backing and some spare change the directors found in their couch after a drunken episode. What makes the situation worse is that the whole show actually had a fairly decent budget, so mistakes like this are pretty much unforgivable.

(3) The Performances

I don't think I've ever come across another piece of TV where not a single actor was doing a good job or looked like they were having a fun time being on the set (except for another Serbian show called South Wind, but atleast the crew there actually seemed to enjoy themselves whilst working on it).

The show was mostly hyped up as being the acting debut of a popular turbofolk singer Milica Pavlović as the series' lead, however, she's probably the worst actor in the whole thing.

I know, I know, there can't be hundreds of Will Smiths and not every music artist has what it takes to be a good and succesful actor or actress and it's clear from her interviews that she had the full support of her friends and family memebers, as well as that she really wanted for this show to become a hit, however, that doesn't equate to doing a good job. It might even be because the poor thing was given such and underwelhming script to work off of. Even if that is true, her delivery and mannerisms all come across as very bland, flat and unexpressive, wheater she's supposed to be portraying grief or be her normal showmany self, she just never acts natural in front of the camera, which is odd given that she probably acted in music videos before (I don't know, I don't follow the turbofolk music scene). However, many folks are saying that she isn't even close to being a great or even good music artist, with some even calling her to be the worst out of the entire toxic vat that is that genre.

Now, there's also the option that she recognized how bad the project was and acted poorly in it for trolling purposes (like Robert Pattinson in the Twilight series or Dakota Johnson in the Fifty shades trilogy), however, I wasn't able to find any info regarding that, given that she seems very happy in the interviews and the behind the scenes featurette, so I should have probably put a big MAYBE next to that statement and surround it in big floating airquotes.

You know your show probably sucks if even a great actor sucks in it. Such is the case with The Singer and Miloš Timotijević. I've loved his performance as the Interpol agent Petrit Koci in the crime drama Besa (arguably the best thing to ever come out of Serbian television) and he was decent even in stuff I didn't enjoy like Balkan Shadows (Senke nad Balkanom) and South Wind (Južni Vetar), however, he's unwatchably bad in this one. For the entire runtime of the first season it seemed as if he just didn't want to be there or felt like the whole project was below his level, despite usually bringing his A (or atleast B) game when it comes to his roles.

(3) The Soundtrack

Man, South Wind really didn't teach me a thing, now did it?

As I had made it abundantly clear I can't stand turbofolk. It's earbleedingly annoying, terribly written, poorly composed and has no integrity or cultural/artistic value to it. Quite frankly it's the only music genre that I believe has no redeeming qualities to it. Now, granted, this might be the result moreso of personal taste, rahter than objective criticism, so I'll try to keep this passage of the review as brief as possible. For my non-European readers out there, Serbia is the biggest exporter of the turbofolk music genre in not only the Balkans, but probably even Europe as a whole. It's an aspect of the contemporary cultural zeitgeist that an individual from any country either hates (such as myself and the majority of my friends) or loves. There's literally no inbetween. And, of course, it manages to sneak it's way into movies and shows because you simply can't avoid it given it's growing popularity in recent years, making it harder and harder for me to find a soundtrack to a contemporary flick from the Balkans which I geniuenly enjoyed.

Just like with the music genre itself, if you hate it you probably won't be a fan of a show that revolves around it (like in my case), but if you're a fan, you'll probably dig it's take on it's uber complicated and mesed up behind the scenes world.

(4) The One Positive Aspect

Ok, ok, I (deservedly so) harped on this show for long enough, however, as with virtually any piece of media, there is atleast one geniuenly well made aspect of it. That being the opening credits.

Sure, they might be flashy and a tad bit generic, however, the opening theme is suitabley haunting and the overally design is very visually appealing. It's, without the shadow of a doub't a piece of true design/music genious and I can only praise Antonijević for choosing a talented individual to handle this aspect of the project. If only the other aspects of it were equally as good and we might have had an entertaining show, instead of the painful abomination we got. It reminds me a tad bit of the opening credits for Civil Servant, which were also leagues ahead of any other aspects of that show.

So, in the end, would I reccomend this show?

I don't think I could stretch the definition of the word NO in order to fully show how much I wouldn't do that, unless you're my worst enemy that is. The show begins as this amateurish kind of bad which you can atleast playfully smirk or even laugh at thanks to the utter lack of effort put into it, however, the more you watch it, the more exhausted and frustrated you become and begin to think suicidal thoughts (or atleast the thoughts of comitting TV homicide). Unless you really want to see something annoying and cringey, I'd kindly suggest you to stay as far away from this monstrosity as you possibly can.

Trailers: