Katarakt (2007–2008) User Reviews

Very good !

[natass-1 · 8/10 · 27 January 2008]

Katarakt is one of the best series that Flanders had to offer the last years; actors are talented and the story is very good. Katarakt shows 2 years (Each episodes = two months) out of the life of Elizabeth Donckers and her family. Elizabeth has a difficult relationship with her father and has nightmares from the past. She has 2 brothers; 1 is a doctor and the other one is mentally disabled (played by a very good actor !). Elizabeth was a professor at university but is not happy and decides to go into the fruit business with her family in law. She is a stubborn woman who knows what she wants and always wants it her way.

Katarakt is very popular in Flanders and watched by many people. The series shows how life in Flanders (Limburg) really is; the landscape, the fruit industry, the fair, the people,...

The very negative comment from [e-mail] surprises me a bit, but there are in every country negative people who feel the need to express their bitterness.

Nice start, quick deterioration

[rafcox79 · 5/10 · 11 February 2008]

Katarakt has been aired for 10 weeks now. Though interesting at first, improbabilities being added up every week make the story less and less thought-provoking. As happens often in Flemish TV-productions, directing and acting are a job very well done, but the scenario totally ruins the series. There's too little coherence between episodes, interesting story lines stay too superficial and are abandoned without a clear reason. Every episode something terrible happens to Elizabeth Donckers or her direct environment, but as a resolute fruit company manager she deals with it her way. The nature of her misfortunes are of a diversity as wide as can be, and are ridiculous at times. In one year, her husband has an affair, her father appears not to be her biological father, he dies of cancer, her son quits school, her retarded brother's deviation appears to be her fault, she gets caught using illegal chemicals for their fruit company, her husband commits suicide as a result of that, she's the victim of fraud, her brother-in-law appears to be infertile.. Does a series really needs all this to make us hang on there for 13 weeks? Wouldn't it be better off with some stronger characters, whose actions and experiences are comprehensible by their motivations in life instead of a result of a lazy writer?

I have been watching every episode until now, but I think I've had just enough of it..

Katarakt

[gerrit-six · 11 December 2007]

I am inclined to agree with Karlomans observations concerning the credibility of the story. Make believe is a strange art, isn't it? Lying the truth. I don't mind the absence of the regional dialect it would rather be a preposterous thing although Flemish drama is invaded by regional speech (Antwerp dialect) which gives it immediately a hideous smell of 'soap'. I feel we once and again failed an opportunity to make the real thing, something larger than life ( which is of course the nature of drama). I fear Katarakt wont have a second chance to make a first impression.... It is not only a question of talent, which we have in stock, but a strive for quality.

An over the top soap, not worthy of the name drama series

[karloman · 5/10 · 9 December 2007]

I watched the first episode of 'Katarakt' without prejudice or any knowledge about it at all, so I started with a clean slate. What I saw was in one word: "ridiculous". The story is set in Haspengouw, Limburg, Belgium, yet nobody seems to speak the regional dialect, weird... The protagonist, Elizabeth, is a 38 year old department head in the university of Hasselt (again, nobody speaks the dialect), has two kids, each 18 years old; which means she was 20 (or 19) when she gave birth to two kids. We are supposed to believe, that she successfully finished her studies, and became department head in a university, with two kids at the young age of 19? Her father is a doctor, and so is her brother, and of course... they look down upon her because she's not a doctor; she's married to the son of a fruit tree pruner, whose other son (her brother in-law) is married to her best friend (or sister, it wasn't quite clear); so Elizabeth and her husband, Paul, are having some sort of relationship problems; he doesn't like it that she's trying to get a promotion in the university, because he's hardly seeing her now; think about the relationship difficulties they will face if she'd be promoted. Yet with her busy schedule, she still finds time to go out and help her father in-law with the fruit trees (She doesn't have to sleep, of course). Did I mention her father in-law is having financial problems? Ooh and she accidentally cut of her brother in-law's finger... whoops; The character's are way over the top: you have the unlikely successful young businesswoman who doesn't have time for her husband and her two adolescent children who are hardly any younger than she is, yet she still manages to work all nights at a fruit tree garden...; and we are supposed to believe that?! Oh yes, before I forget, she has a retarded brother... gee... could you be any more soap-opera?!

These things would not bother me in an afternoon soap like 'neighbors' of 'days of our lives' where it's not uncommon for an evil twin brother to pop-up on times unexpected, but this cannot do for a Sunday night line-up!

Now for the good stuff: the acting's solid, they have a pretty good cast (yet I would find it more realistic if the spoke the dialect!), and the directing is fairly decent, 'though not great.