(Review based on watching the whole of the first season.)
In Antwerp, a school teacher treats her pupils to an educational trip to an institute specialized in the study of contagious diseases. Sadly enough this little outing coincides with the surprise emergence of a new, extremely lethal disease. Soon the disease spreads all through the institute, threatening staff, patients and visitors alike. Since it is critical to stop the spread of the epidemic, authorities decide to cordon off part of the city. Otherwise a plague of Biblical proportions might sweep across Antwerp, infecting thousands of citizens and invading a major European port...
"Cordon" is a hard-hitting drama series from Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The viewer is taken deep into a world where the comforting certainties of everyday life have fled and where normalcy has been replaced by chaos, panic and insecurity. As the bodies pile up, people show their true colors : some individuals can live perfectly well with the idea of their aged and lonely neighbors starving, while others will try to help. By the same token some people can leave corpses rotting where they lie, while others will do their best to provide a respectful farewell and a proper funeral. However, goodness and decency do not constitute a talisman against death ; quite often survival depends on acts of cruelty and callousness, or on sheer dumb luck.
Plot-wise, "Cordon" follows the adventures of a number of Antverpian characters, including a pregnant teenager from a family of grocers, an aged breeder of laboratory rats, a schoolboy punished with detention and a female expert on the retrieval of damaged computer data. The various story threads are skillfully woven into an unusually disquieting tapestry.
Much of the power of "Cordon" derives from its non-adherence to the moralist clichés of Hollywood disaster movies, in which the guilty / the unlikeable are punished while the innocent / the likeable escape. In this series, children perish just because they happened to find themselves in the neighborhood when some new disease emerged ; had their teachers decided to send them on a trip to a brewery museum, a castle or a post office they might have lived to watch the tale unfold on the internet. Here, existence has turned into a lottery : buy a chocolate éclair from baker A and you survive, buy a chocolate éclair from baker B and you die.
The well-chosen locations add to the visual credibility and plausibility of the whole. This sense of credibility and plausibility is further enhanced by the clever insertion of eerily realistic news flashes and updates, complete with famous anchormen.
Lovers of Flemish cinema and television will recognize many a familiar face, such as Koen De Bouw (the prime minister besieged by troubles from "De Premier") as a gangster taking over a grocery store.
On a lighter note, "Cordon" provides the perfect riposte for women bothered by male colleagues who want to invite them to a nice late-evening meal. ("Now that's an excellent idea. Does your wife cook well ?")
In Antwerp, a school teacher treats her pupils to an educational trip to an institute specialized in the study of contagious diseases. Sadly enough this little outing coincides with the surprise emergence of a new, extremely lethal disease. Soon the disease spreads all through the institute, threatening staff, patients and visitors alike. Since it is critical to stop the spread of the epidemic, authorities decide to cordon off part of the city. Otherwise a plague of Biblical proportions might sweep across Antwerp, infecting thousands of citizens and invading a major European port...
"Cordon" is a hard-hitting drama series from Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The viewer is taken deep into a world where the comforting certainties of everyday life have fled and where normalcy has been replaced by chaos, panic and insecurity. As the bodies pile up, people show their true colors : some individuals can live perfectly well with the idea of their aged and lonely neighbors starving, while others will try to help. By the same token some people can leave corpses rotting where they lie, while others will do their best to provide a respectful farewell and a proper funeral. However, goodness and decency do not constitute a talisman against death ; quite often survival depends on acts of cruelty and callousness, or on sheer dumb luck.
Plot-wise, "Cordon" follows the adventures of a number of Antverpian characters, including a pregnant teenager from a family of grocers, an aged breeder of laboratory rats, a schoolboy punished with detention and a female expert on the retrieval of damaged computer data. The various story threads are skillfully woven into an unusually disquieting tapestry.
Much of the power of "Cordon" derives from its non-adherence to the moralist clichés of Hollywood disaster movies, in which the guilty / the unlikeable are punished while the innocent / the likeable escape. In this series, children perish just because they happened to find themselves in the neighborhood when some new disease emerged ; had their teachers decided to send them on a trip to a brewery museum, a castle or a post office they might have lived to watch the tale unfold on the internet. Here, existence has turned into a lottery : buy a chocolate éclair from baker A and you survive, buy a chocolate éclair from baker B and you die.
The well-chosen locations add to the visual credibility and plausibility of the whole. This sense of credibility and plausibility is further enhanced by the clever insertion of eerily realistic news flashes and updates, complete with famous anchormen.
Lovers of Flemish cinema and television will recognize many a familiar face, such as Koen De Bouw (the prime minister besieged by troubles from "De Premier") as a gangster taking over a grocery store.
On a lighter note, "Cordon" provides the perfect riposte for women bothered by male colleagues who want to invite them to a nice late-evening meal. ("Now that's an excellent idea. Does your wife cook well ?")