Love/Hate

Something we talked about in lesson was at this point on the blog avoiding addressing Breaking Bad because it is simply too big of a subject, but one thing we discussed was how big series' with huge story arcs are primarily an American thing because of paying channels like HBO and AMC, as well as internet programmers like Netflix and therefore one thing I would like to touch is an Irish series I have recently finished called Love/Hate. The show is produced by RTE and obviously has a much lower budget than that of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones or The Wire but it does an amazing job of making up for this through skill of editing and direction and simply brilliant writing. Many people have compared it to The Wire which in some ways it is i.e the fact that it is about the Dublin drug trade from the ground up or top down as it may be , but I also think it share a lot with The Sopranos in that it is about all centred around one group of organised criminals and has off shoot storys from this everywhere. The network becomes more and more elaborate as the series goes on and over time characters and our attitudes towards them change completely. One novel way the production gets around its smaller budget is in particular scenes of violence, such as when a man is mauled by a pair of weapon dogs the shots, editing and sound design come together perfectly and although you are never shown the dogs actually biting the man you feel so much as though it is happening.
This is probably the best series I have seen since Breaking Bad and I feel in time could be a real game changed on this side of the Atlantic.

 This is a brilliantly shot and edited sequence in which the crew try to orchestrate a robbery.