The Manor House - Série 3

The last series is set at the turn of 1930/1931. Like the second season, the third is a shortened, pleasantly compact season. The main storylines revolve around Maria and Jaroslav and the boxing clashes between the Sokol and Turner teams. Irena von Lippi was recast (which actually helped, because Anna Fialová was more adolescent and Katarína Šafaříková managed to portray Irena as a mature personality). However, the concentration on another crime plot made the series distant from the realities of the time, the construction of the studios at Barrandov was only briefly mentioned, and there was more talk about Max Schmeling, but no actor played him. No one knows what happened to the original idea of a family saga that would experience the entire First Republic. I consider Petr Vondráček's non-acting and the fear of showing key events that are talked about before and after but are not shown even in a short shot (not only Schmeling's hospitality match, but also Marie and Jaroslav's wedding) to be the biggest negatives. Somewhere on the borderline, there is an attempt to portray Veronika Arichteva's character as a female vamp even in the most banal scenes, while the better storylines include those of Petra Jungmanová, Jitka Schneiderová and Maroš Kramár, because they all have something to do and look good even in this light retro. Trnavský and Studenková’s lines were promising, but unfortunately there wasn't much room for them. The Dramedy creators left the series so that if they wanted to they could build on it, but if they didn't want to it wouldn't fundamentally matter. It could have been better, of course, but by the current standards of Czech Television, they still managed to make an interesting series whose message is obvious and not a waste of time. Those who have a deeper interest in this time period can easily find more information, and those who have never heard of the First Republic before can be inspired and imagine that time in a slightly different light. (07/02/2021)