On the whole I enjoyed Unorthodox. The story of a young woman who doesn't fit in to an orthodox Hasidic community in New York, and has to escape, is powerful, and all production values are high-class. The acting is uniformly excellent. So why did some of it seem not as compelling as other parts? The depiction of the community in New York is just superb. To an outsider it seems completely authentic. Everything rings true. Magnificent. But the sections of this four-part series set in the Berlin she escapes to seem far less real and believable. Why? I think the answer comes in the 'making of' section which you can watch after the final episode. It appears that they were mostly dreamed up by another mind, presumably at netflix' instigation. Once you know that, the difference between the stunning realism and power of the original story and the so-so Berlin sub-plots is completely explained. If I were the author I would have been grimacing through half of the Berlin scenes... but of course, being netflix, I'd have been grimacing all the way to the bank. I now want to read the original.
Review of Unorthodox
