Protector: Episode 1

December 27, 2018 5:52 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

While desperately seeking opportunities to fund his next business venture, Hakan comes across a talismanic shirt potentially worth a lot of money.

Decider - Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Protector’ On Netflix, A Turkish Drama Where A Guy With Dreams Becomes An Indestructible Hero

posted by oh yeah! (4 comments total)

Has anyone watched this recent addition to Netflix? I don't expect I'll be doing threads for every episode, will probably just post a full-season thread when I make it to the end if no one else has first, but I figured it was worth having a pilot thread for first impressions and general non-spoilery reviews.

I thought this first episode was intriguing, though probably mostly due to the setting. Even if it does turn out to be a generic 'chosen one' hero's journey (I mean, they've already ticked off the 'get Uncle Ben killed' box), the scenery will be nice.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:08 PM on December 27, 2018

I watched the first two, and I'm still on the fence.

On the plus side, I'm intrigued to see how Turkish pop culture looks compared to US stuff, and this already had some cool details.

On the down side... it is definitely a generic chosen one story, and those live or die for me by how much I like the protagonists. I actively dislike both Hakan and Memo, and have no strong opinions about anybody else, which is making further viewing sound like a slog right now.
posted by mordax at 11:53 AM on December 29, 2018

Having made it to the end, Hakan kinda grew on me. The show definitely doesn't break any new ground as a supernatural genre show, or as far as the stunt-work, but it did have a unique look and style from just the Turkishness of it all that carried me through.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:01 PM on December 30, 2018

I liked it well enough. It was a fairly generic chosen one story, but I do like the atypical locale. I ended up watching it dubbed because most of my television watching time is while I'm spinning these days, but I also had the captions on - and I thought the dubbed dialogue sounded more natural than the subbed version, which rarely happens. I didn't really care about Hakan, but my expectations on that were pretty low from the start.

I don't know when I'll end up watching more of it: I ended up getting pulled into something else instead. But I'll probably end up watching the rest eventually.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:35 PM on January 8, 2019