Emerald City

Year of release : 2017

 

Run time : 42min episodes - 10 episodes

 

Genre : Fantasy / Tv Series / Mini Series

 

Cast : Adria Arjona , Vincent D'Onofrio , Ana Ularu , Joely Richardson

 

 

The series are based on the Oz book series written by author L. Frank Baum.

 

Dorothy is adopted(this is important to the plot).One night,after leaving the hospital where she works as a nurse,to see her real mother,she's caught in a tornado,and ends up in Oz.

The police car she was in falls there into one of the Cardinal Witches making Dorothy believe it killed her. 

Dorothy has a dog with her,the police dog,which she ends up calling Toto,because one of the natives tells her in their language,a dog is a toto.

She also finds herself say to the natives who love the witch that she killed her!

The natives tell her only a witch can kill another witch.

 

The Yellow Brick Road is actually opium.

 

Dorothy saves a crucified man who doesn't know who he is,so she names him Lucas,after her hometown,at his request.

 

The witch is still alive,and comes for her. Surprisingly,there are no guns in Oz,and the witch kills herself by mistake,playing with it,while torturing the lead and her rescue.

 

The Wizard of Oz is not the good guy in this one,he’s quite the bad guy,who’s banned magic and rules with an iron fist.

 

The Witch of the West runs a brothel and is always high on poppy,hence her fingers are blackened.

Glinda,her sister,runs an orphanage and turns the girls into a sort of nuns with knowledge,working for the wizard.

 

Tip is a boy who’s mother tells him has bad blood,and needs to take his medicine regularly.He looks a lot and sounds a lot like a girl.

Running from home,he’s out of medicine and wakes up a girl. Trying to get more medicine to turn into his boy state,Tip is told the female form is her normal state,as his tutor used banned black magic on her to keep her looking like a boy.

 

The season moves fast,something they don’t usually do in series,and so far so good.

 

The acting is good,especially coming from Vincent D’Onofrio,one of my favorites,the reason I started watching these series,as he talked about it on his page( I watched years ago,and rewatched it now).

 

I didn’t like how certain characters had no allegiance to Dorothy who helped them. The little girl she helped,pulled a 180 and treated her like a stranger and even worse,an enemy,once back with her witch sisters.

The man she loved,who turned out to be married to Glinda ,after having such a strong bond,(we’re shown this with the Witch of the West who puts a spell on them to see what happened to him,why he lost his memory,and she specifically says they need to have a strong bond or else they’d go insane),we see him trying to kill her to prove his allegiance to Glinda,who asked him to kill her.

 

The series were filmed in Croatia , Spain and Hungary ,and one can definitely recognize the beauty of Park Guell in Barcelona ,Alcazar in Seville,Seville, and Calahorra Castle in Granada.

 

The series have only one season,as it was cancelled.

 

Rating : It's so money !