Beat has been heavily promoted as a thriller based around the clubbing scene. Right now techno and in particular German/Berlin techno is arguably the coolest musical scene with clubs like Berghain and Tresor being known as the best or most exclusive clubs in the world.
Electronic dance music in 2018 is undergoing a resurgence on a par with the 90s.
While we had movies like Human Traffic in the past there does not appear to be many film makers too interested in capturing the current clubbing experience.
Beat has been advertised in a way that plays up the clubbing aspect of the series and has been covered prior to release in many of the major dance music websites.
Even Marcel Dettman has been drafted into to compose the closing credits music. Therefor expectations were quite high and what we seen in the press and trailers did look like they took the underground clubbing experience seriously.
However this is not really a series about clubbing. It takes a few episodes to understand just what this is actually about. Is it about a serial killer? Arms trafficking? Illegal organ transplants? Terrorism?
There are alot of different plots and subplots, so many that it feels they have crammed far too much into a seven episode series.
Some of the plot reveals take a very long time so the series is best watched in a binge as you may forget about some of the story lines crammed into each episode.
The series is basically a spy thriller with a club promoter the main character. There are some scenes set in the club which are done quite well but its all very superficial with montages of people taking drugs and very little focus on the music with faceless DJs playing and none of the musical highlights that clubber actually go to experience.
The use of German techno and the clubbing scene seems to be used as a marketing gimmick hoping to benefit from the popularity of dance music.
This is a good crime/thriller series which will keep you engaged with plenty of violence and plot twists, its just not the series that the promotion promised. Its a fairly standard affair and the clubbing aspects could easily be removed and it wouldn't affect the story in any way.
The series concludes in such a way that a second series may be in the pipeline and that the series may end up in that other Mecca of clubland....Ibiza.
If that is the case then it seems the producers are intent on exploiting another clubbing scene as a gimmick to increase their audience share.
Watch this if you enjoy spy/crime thriller but do not expect much in the way of music or clubbing, despite the title or what any of the adverts promise.
I had watched the original German language version with subtitles.
Review of Beat
