Fire Country (2022)

Watchseries; I was hopeful and this was a total letdown. Writing was terrible. Full of cliches and little else. There was nothing realistic. Provided no incentive to want to get to know any of the characters more. Almost too much of a cast which made it difficult to care about any of them. Virtually no plot. The premise of the show had promise but they completely missed the mark. But I think the worst was the acting. Or should I say overacting. And I'd have to say it was heavy on playing to stereotypes which seemed to border on offensive. I would be seriously surprised if this show lasted a full season. Hard pass.

I was hopeful and this was a total letdown. Writing was terrible. Full of cliches and little else. There was nothing realistic. Provided no incentive to want to get to know any of the characters more. Almost too much of a cast which made it difficult to care about any of them. Virtually no plot. The premise of the show had promise but they completely missed the mark. But I think the worst was the acting. Or should I say overacting. And I'd have to say it was heavy on playing to stereotypes which seemed to border on offensive. I would be seriously surprised if this show lasted a full season. Hard pass.

Fire Country watchseries. Have you ever just REALLY WANTED a Chicago Fire with criminals and one tenth the budget... This is the show for you.

The effects are 2000's level. As if they used a render farm of 486 Pentium chips worth $2 each. The fire... does not look like fire. It looks like a projection of light of a large fake fire on top of several small fake fires. EVERY TIME!

That is not even the most intrusive element. Its the mad dash to humanize way too many characters way too fast. It reads like you are about to kill them all off they humanized them so hard. The fact that they did not die within the next two scenes is baffling. As it would be the only way to justify ramming the exposition down our throats like you paid us. It is a pilot, NOT an entire season.

Broadcast channels serving up trash. :(

HARD PASS.

I copied this, because it said it perfectly.... I was hopeful and this was a total letdown. Writing was terrible. Full of cliches and little else. There was nothing realistic. Provided no incentive to want to get to know any of the characters more. Almost too much of a cast which made it difficult to care about any of them. Virtually no plot. The premise of the show had promise but they completely missed the mark. But I think the worst was the acting. Or should I say overacting. And I'd have to say it was heavy on playing to stereotypes which seemed to border on offensive. I would be seriously surprised if this show lasted a full season. Hard pass.

This storyline has more places to go than I could count. Complications, opportunities for tension, both slow-growing and the blow-up kind, several interesting characters, and dynamic scenery.

Fire country is another throwback to the time where dramas were developed and built around the theme of family. Our times have changed, but the human desire for closeness hasn't.

Max Thieriot brings a lot to the palate. The part requires depth of character, but his athleticism adds the required realism as well. I've always liked Billy Burke and Dinae Farr. There complicated relationship, with each other, and Bodie, will add conflict and interest as this series develops.

My only gripe is that Hollywood stuck it's nose into this one and included the 'check this box' character that's completely unnecessary. Adding characters because of what they are, not who they are, is the current trend, but that's not storytelling, that's not creative, that's filling an artificial requirement. One star deducted for allowing political correctness to hold sway over creativity.

I was looking forward to this series because we live in an active fire area and the prison camp firefighters are numerous. I was extremely disappointed (again) by the quality and style of the acting, script and direction. I think if the producers could make a quality series based on this idea it would be very successful, but these days quality series are rare on network tv and streaming. I know not everyone has the budget to make another Fargo or Better Call Saul, but I'm pretty sure they could do better than this. An example is the series Alaska Daily, which opened about the same day as Fire Country. In addition, it's true that network tv is tied down by the ridiculous rules involving equity, but wouldn't it make more sense to have the gay people be male firefighters rather than 2 of the 3 women on the show?

Like most TV cop shows not being a true reflection of the actual job (I was a Student Security Officer for my university's police department for 5 years), the first episode showed us lots of things that were right about fighting forest fires, but emphasized only the most harrowing and adventurous aspects. If you think digging a fire line is exciting, think again. It's hard work, takes hours and hours, is as boring as you can imagine and takes place far away from any active flames. (And yes, I also worked two summers as a forest fire fighter.)

Like most TV shows, the actual framework seems to be used simply as a way to dramatize interpersonal relationships. If you enjoy that and take a big grain of salt, you'll like this show.