The new series Adikts, the first episode of which is broadcast this Wednesday evening by Czech Television and is already available in its entirety on the iVysílní platform, seems paradoxical. It was commissioned by the Czech Association of Insurance Companies and the Police as part of an awareness campaign about drugs. It targets the young, but it delivers a message that is old, listened to. It shows the bad “trip” of several characters, but it is painful to watch because of the ill-handled script.
Director and screenwriter Adam Sedlák can write great dialogues. It was already heard in his first film Semestr, filmed for Stream online television, and last year’s film Banger, which was awarded two Czech Lions.
His characters tend to be young, which is still noticeably missing in Czech cinematography and on the screens. Sedlák not only knows how young Czechs speak. His dialogues have a rhythm and tend to be pointed a bit like rap lyrics. It also brings great topics. In addition to his projects, he was signed as the author of the initial idea under the project #annaismissing.
The six-part novel Adikts was inspired by the English series Misfits from 2009, but the director cleverly changed the main motif. British heroes unexpectedly gain strange superpowers during a mysterious storm. Czech students addictionology in a strangely distorted reality, they take drugs that are supposed to get rid of their problems for a while. But unexpectedly massive effects cannot be avoided.
Both groups quickly discover that their new skills and inclinations are more of a curse than a blessing. But after some time. First of all, Ema, played by Kristýna Jedličková, used to send everyone to hell, uses a drug that makes her love people. Max, played by Petr Uhlík, gets a permanent erection and thanks to it arouses the interest of girls. Everyone is compensating for old hurts before apparent happiness turns out to be a dangerous “shortcut to a dead end” is the key phrase awareness campaigns associated with the project.
Beware of drugs
The actors perform well, if we don’t mind that they represent one-dimensional beings whose behavior often makes no sense. Sedlák’s films and series are usually well cast and it is clear that he got along well with the actors this time as well.
The picture from Adikts shows Luciana Tomášová as Mell and Martina Jindrová as Soňa. | Photo: Ondřej Folkert Horák
In addition, he surrounded himself with collaborators who gave his work an attractive, well-fitting visual style. Thanks to Dušan Husár’s camera, Šimon Hájek’s editing, and the music of producer Oliver Torr, who was already involved in Banger, Adikts immediately feels sovereign. Even the way of narration, at least until the middle of the first episode, promises a strong spectacle. Trampled, courageous, full of visual ideas, interesting dialogues or unexpected cuts.
However, it was already true in Banger that the power that Sedlák’s dialogues have is missing when building a story. Some plot twists were hard to believe and the creator had nothing to say in the finale. In addition to the warning that you need to be careful with drugs. He even insured himself with a literal ending in case someone didn’t pick it up. Banger could already be part of the anti-drug campaign.
The current series, paid for by insurance companies and the police, is even more clueless. Moreover, the way it portrays the effects of addictive substances only repeats stereotypes or produces complete nonsense, such as a gigantically enlarged penis after the drug.
Thanks to the strong stylization, Adikts are attractive to look at, but their lazily drawn world has no logic and often no relation to reality. So he can’t say anything interesting about her. Drug addicts “from the street” are depicted by the creators as human waste, while the heroes, on the contrary, seem to have risen from a vacuum.
If this campaign is to contribute to “more informed choices”, as the sponsors hoped, it will have to achieve it differently. From Adikts we learn nothing about drugs or people.
Their energy lies in small ideas, striking sentences and rhythmic dialogues. There are so many clichés, such as when Max has something “w*cky” in every other scene, that it quickly becomes tiresome.
The Adikts series can be seen in its entirety on the iVysílání platform, the first episode is broadcast by ČT1 on Wednesday evening. | Video: Czech Television
Sexy babes and macho morons
In addition, Adam Sedlák seems to have forgotten that series are primarily about characters. He only hastily sketches Max, who covers up his complexes with funny statements, the poisoned Emma and the other characters. Mell is stressed by school and her mom, Robin stutters, and so on. When they fall into the drug trap one by one, we often don’t even understand what changes in them and why. And we certainly do not sympathize with them. The series maintains a cynical distance from them.
But in the second part, the narrative turns awkwardly to a literal description of the problems that Max and the others wanted to solve with drugs. For some, we watch painful scenes from their past, others have to explicitly summarize their story in dialogues.
Ema was the worst. At first, we only know about her that she is measured towards everyone. But then she becomes the wet dream of everyone who watches TV for sexy exposed female bodies. When Emma breaks free from the drug, she says, “I’m not what you want me to be, I don’t need you.” And then he secures our understanding by announcing that he is asexual.
Even Mell, played by Luciana Tomášová, has to declare out loud that she suffers from the disinterest of her mother, played by Lenka Dusilová – just in case we don’t recognize it. He then has a poorly written dialogue with her that changes their relationship.
Max presents himself as a sensitive boy in sweats flashbacks about a sick mother and a cowardly father, which strangely changes the pace of the series. Martina Jindrová plays the role of the initially submissive Soni perfectly, but she doesn’t have much to do except for meth tics.
In the picture from Adikts are Martina Jindrová, Luciana Tomášová, Petr Uhlík, Tadeáš Moravec, Kristýna Jedličková and Jan Hájek. | Photo: Czech Television
Circus Addict
Similar to Kristýna Jedličková in the role of Ema reduced to a sexy object, it was captured by Tadeáš Moravec, whose Robin becomes a macho “moron” on cocaine. Although the series once again explicitly illustrates that a person on drugs behaves horribly, at the same time it all seems as if the creators are amused by cynical machismo bullshit.
The series reduces Kristýna Jedličková in the role of Emma (left) to a sexy object. | Photo: Patrik Klema
Max is also misogynistic, but with him, it is played on the fact that we don’t take a character pouring out one message after another seriously. By the end, we can be quite tired of the whole pointless circus.
The five young actors are joined by Jan Hájek and Lenka Dusilová in the roles of educators who, in this slightly futuristic world, aspire to the prestigious position of national anti-drug coordinators. The well-known singer is a great fit for the series with her appearance, but less so with her stiff expression. In addition, both characters unfortunately underline that all characters speak quite similarly. Although one of them is always joking, another is throwing everything down and another is just trying to somehow endure all the muttering.
When we hear Lenka Dusilová talk about the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and the “gas man”, it reveals that she and the director did not come up with a way to say the joke so that it sounds right.
Misfits, Euforie a Climax
In addition to the British Misfits, which stood on well-told character stories and cleverly chosen superpowers, comparisons are offered with another famous series for young people: the American Euphoria. She criticized that part of the audience as nicely shot, but superficial. However, Euphoria had an above-average script and explored the twists and turns of the protagonists’ minds in detail and coherence.
Some episodes of Adikts may want to resemble the film Climax by Gaspar Noé, who six years ago filmed a colorful description of a bad “trip” in a mountain hut with a group of dancers.
While Climax expressed a wide range of emotions from the warmest to the worst that accompany impulsive behavior, Adikts maintains an almost imperceptible distance from everyone. While Climax was sarcastic, Adikts are cynical. In their strange world, where there are no good relationships and everyone behaves terribly, the viewer is not allowed to empathize with anyone.
The series somewhat missed the opportunity to follow up on the successes of two recent Czech Television projects for young people. Both the previous year’s web series TBH by Lucie Kajánková, starting with a school shooting, and director Damián Vondrášek’s Five Years, about rape after the prom, were interesting examples of titles in which new talents participated. Both were successful in their own way: TBH toured world festivals, Five years managed to enter the debate on sexual violence and, for example, got into the German-French TV program Arte. Compared to them, Adikts unfortunately feels more like a fluke.
2024-01-24 16:00:53
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