This rings a bell. I used to take groups of deprived kids on character-forming "holidays" during my incarnation as a social worker. None was as dodgy as these kids in the series though, although some were more unruly. I see that the same pressures that pertained in the UK many years ago against such trips that the Sun and the Daily Mail frothed against are replicated in Austria and Germany. These trips are often successful in forming relationships with the youth and in helping their social and interpersonal skills but ignorance and hatred from the red tops unfortunately make the idea so difficult to follow through.
We have a group, then, of youth with a social worker and a mountain guide who will spend eight weeks together in the Alps. We do not know what the kids have done but we see immediate problems as one of them is sent home in the first few minutes of the programme for violence. We also very quickly see that there is even prejudice from the adults involved which sets up a series of red herrings regarding the plot and the murder, which we know about from IMDB's summary.
We then enter a sub "Lord of the Flies" realm. The kids need to establish some order amongst themselves and work their demons and histories out as well as the murder. In the meantime, the head of the organisation that holds the trips is doing his best to help the quest to find the children against straight-laced, rule-following police investigators.
Obviously there are revelations during the story and all is not what it seems amongst the young people nor amongst the villagers and its police force. The series ends on a cliffhanger or two indicating clearly that a second series is probably on its way. We already know that several crimes amongst the kids have not been punished and the original murder needs a resolution, so these will presumably be the themes.
I cannot say I was gripped by this. Nor did I feel any real tension during the series. I watched it all as I wanted to know what happened. I shall probably see the second series when it comes out. However, it could have been far better and I felt the directing was lacking in finesse. The characters also had little subtlety so the scriptwriters need to do better next time.
We have a group, then, of youth with a social worker and a mountain guide who will spend eight weeks together in the Alps. We do not know what the kids have done but we see immediate problems as one of them is sent home in the first few minutes of the programme for violence. We also very quickly see that there is even prejudice from the adults involved which sets up a series of red herrings regarding the plot and the murder, which we know about from IMDB's summary.
We then enter a sub "Lord of the Flies" realm. The kids need to establish some order amongst themselves and work their demons and histories out as well as the murder. In the meantime, the head of the organisation that holds the trips is doing his best to help the quest to find the children against straight-laced, rule-following police investigators.
Obviously there are revelations during the story and all is not what it seems amongst the young people nor amongst the villagers and its police force. The series ends on a cliffhanger or two indicating clearly that a second series is probably on its way. We already know that several crimes amongst the kids have not been punished and the original murder needs a resolution, so these will presumably be the themes.
I cannot say I was gripped by this. Nor did I feel any real tension during the series. I watched it all as I wanted to know what happened. I shall probably see the second series when it comes out. However, it could have been far better and I felt the directing was lacking in finesse. The characters also had little subtlety so the scriptwriters need to do better next time.
