Protector: The Protector, Season 1

December 29, 2018 7:55 PM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Discovering his ties to a secret ancient order, a young man living in modern Istanbul embarks on a quest to save the city from an immortal enemy.
posted by oh yeah! (4 comments total)

i just binged this over xmas week. not bad! very fun to see Istanbul - i once visited there 25 years ago and wondered if it i would recognize it at all. this really gives you a sense of being in that city, of physically journeying through the every-day life of the place. plus, it is an entertaining supernatural soap opera. with lots of sex, as is the wont of soap operas. the dialogue is overdubbed, but the voice actors are REALLY good - i did not find it distracting at all. i mean, they are really good! the plot is not all that unique, but it is entertaining; if you like this genre, the setting makes it worthwhile and the story moves fast enough to stay interesting.
posted by lapolla at 3:11 AM on December 30, 2018

I finished it last night. I watched it in Turkish with English subtitles - I'm not sure how good the subtitling was. Several times there were lines of dialogue exchanged where they neglected to put any subtitles under them, and frequently they'd put "Miss Sancak" in the subtitle when the actor clearly said "Leyla", so if there was any kind of subtlety going on about formality/informality/honorifics, it was lost. But I prefer bad subtitling to dubbing, there's just something so off-putting about dubbing.

Overall, I liked it. The story itself isn't anything earth-shatteringly new genre-wise, but the setting gives it a unique flavor. I loved the little comedic bits, especially every scene with Ceylan, the teenage Loyal One, she cracked me up. "Can you give me five lire? I'll buy us some mussels."

The food thing in general was interesting. The characters are so frequently having/being offered coffee, buying something from street vendors and then actually eating it. Or when Emir and Hakan went to breakfast; I feel like in a US production, they would have just started the scene with them already mid-meal for the journalist to interrupt, but instead in this show they include the 'shoe leather' of Emir suggesting they stop for breakfast, and them having their meal. Or when Ceylan was devouring that sandwich in the pharmacy's secret bat-cave.

I'd seen when searching for reviews (New York Times - Can Netflix Take Turkey’s TV Dramas to the World?) that Netflix has already commissioned a second season, so, I figured we'd end on a cliff-hanger of the Immortal being identified but not defeated. But, man, Hakan must be the worst Protector ever. Lost the shirt, and managed to undo all the work done by every previous Protector, ouch.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:51 AM on December 30, 2018

well, i WAS trying to avoid spoiling it, heh - but, yeah - he's the worst protector, evar. but then, he was never trained for it, nor even told of his purpose. it's not his fault he's bad at it. seems an interesting groundwork for an on-going series, to be able to watch him learn and overcome those challenges. it was pretty obvious who the immortal was, from early on; the plot was not particularly clever or complex. but the writing respected the conventions of the genre without sinking under the weight of of the tropes employed.

oh and - i generally HATE overdubbing. it usually ruins the feel of the work. even when it is animation and it seems like it shouldn't matter. but as i said - the voice work in this was amazing. at times i even forgot that it was overdub, until i would notice the mouths moving. i actually left the overdub version running because i was enjoying that work so much. however, as i had to watch with the volume quite low, i ALSO had on the subtitles. and they were inferior. but i left them on because occasionally, they would have info that the vocal track missed. but the vocal work was damn good.

SPOILERY STUFF:
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i am kind of glad the immortal couple escaped - they really do seem to simply want to be left to their own love story, rather than being destroyers of humanity. if it goes to another season, there will definitely be a bigger "big bad"!
posted by lapolla at 12:03 AM on December 31, 2018

Istanbul must be colder than I thought, I would never imagine underground in Istanbul to have blowing foggy breaths. How cold is it in Istanbul? The dubbing caught me off guard as weird, it took me a while to figure out it was dubbed vs just 3rd rate. The old dude seemed to be the old dude from Warehouse 13 and the girl was Zeva from NCIS and the dude was that goofball from NCIS:LA.

Maybe I should watch with subtitles instead. Would keep watching if there's more.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:08 AM on January 6, 2019