"Van vlees en bloed" tells the story of a family of butchers trying to cope with the challenges and temptations of modern life. It is also a reflexion on the various ties uniting families : ties of blood, of duty, of habit, of love.
In the series the trunk of the family tree, so to speak, consists of an aged widow and her three middle-aged children : a daughter (who is a pretty sane person), a son (who is a sane, though very hot-tempered person) and another son (who suffers from some mental condition or illness such as autism). These persons all have spouses, children, friends, neighbours, colleagues or underlings, resulting in a varied cast of more or less likeable, more or less eccentric characters. Some of the characters are very recognizable, such as the meddling neighbour without a life of his own, who watches and analyzes his surroundings with a relentless vigilance the East-German Stasi would have thought excessive. As befits a proper pest, the neighbour likes to share his observations and conclusions with the rest of the town, while making criminally unfunny jokes and yelling things like "Me, I'm a card ! A real card !"
Many years ago I met the female twin of the character, in the person of a tiny lady of - presumably - Iranian descent who lived next to a friend of mine. The said lady (who, by now, must be long dead) observed my friend pretty much 24/7. My friend and I would be sitting in the garden, discussing the care and feeding of pond fish, and suddenly a neat, well-groomed head would pop up near a rhododendron bush. A delicate voice like a silver bell would remark : "So you went to the dentist on Tuesday morning, didn't you ? Remember the old saying, a peach blooms in spring !" And then the lady would disappear back into her own garden, while humming an Oriental folk song.
The series contains other characters one would like to meet even less, such as a dealer in illegal growth hormones who looks like the love child of D'Artagnan and a morally challenged sewer rat. He is both slimy and genuinely threatening, which must be hellishly difficult to pull off, acting-wise. Which brings me to a next topic : there is some excellent acting going on. The performances leap from the screen, pulsing with life and credibility.
Unsurprisingly, "Van vlees en bloed" deals with meat and meat-related issues, such as gastronomy, agriculture and hunting. It also points out that food is a basic requirement for life. However advanced or sophisticated or modern we may be, a simple truth applies : with food in your belly you can survive and thrive, without food you die.
Finally, the series enriched the Dutch language with a much-needed new word, "bospoeper". Out of politeness I won't translate the expression into English...
In the series the trunk of the family tree, so to speak, consists of an aged widow and her three middle-aged children : a daughter (who is a pretty sane person), a son (who is a sane, though very hot-tempered person) and another son (who suffers from some mental condition or illness such as autism). These persons all have spouses, children, friends, neighbours, colleagues or underlings, resulting in a varied cast of more or less likeable, more or less eccentric characters. Some of the characters are very recognizable, such as the meddling neighbour without a life of his own, who watches and analyzes his surroundings with a relentless vigilance the East-German Stasi would have thought excessive. As befits a proper pest, the neighbour likes to share his observations and conclusions with the rest of the town, while making criminally unfunny jokes and yelling things like "Me, I'm a card ! A real card !"
Many years ago I met the female twin of the character, in the person of a tiny lady of - presumably - Iranian descent who lived next to a friend of mine. The said lady (who, by now, must be long dead) observed my friend pretty much 24/7. My friend and I would be sitting in the garden, discussing the care and feeding of pond fish, and suddenly a neat, well-groomed head would pop up near a rhododendron bush. A delicate voice like a silver bell would remark : "So you went to the dentist on Tuesday morning, didn't you ? Remember the old saying, a peach blooms in spring !" And then the lady would disappear back into her own garden, while humming an Oriental folk song.
The series contains other characters one would like to meet even less, such as a dealer in illegal growth hormones who looks like the love child of D'Artagnan and a morally challenged sewer rat. He is both slimy and genuinely threatening, which must be hellishly difficult to pull off, acting-wise. Which brings me to a next topic : there is some excellent acting going on. The performances leap from the screen, pulsing with life and credibility.
Unsurprisingly, "Van vlees en bloed" deals with meat and meat-related issues, such as gastronomy, agriculture and hunting. It also points out that food is a basic requirement for life. However advanced or sophisticated or modern we may be, a simple truth applies : with food in your belly you can survive and thrive, without food you die.
Finally, the series enriched the Dutch language with a much-needed new word, "bospoeper". Out of politeness I won't translate the expression into English...
