Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Episodes: 10
Duration: 50 minutes (per episode)
Counterpart: Season 1 (DVD) – Series Review
The possible existence of parallel universes has intrigued humankind for quite some time. We have multiple theories surrounding this, but there’s also a lot of fictional material present in books, games, series, and movies. Counterpart also adopts the theory of a parallel universe, but one that has been created by a freak accident in 1993, where both universes were identical up until that time. Now both worlds are diverging and one world is performing invasive actions, where one man is now taking advice from his other-self. We were intrigued by the idea and we loved the execution.
Counterpart plays itself out in our world for the most part, in Berlin. We are taken to a mysterious headquarters, where it’s quite unclear what everyone actually does. Howard (J.K. Simmons) works for Interface, but all he does is have very odd cryptic conversations with unknown people in glass cubicles day after day. Nonetheless, he is proud of his work and he is hoping to get a promotion to the Strategy department. When this is denied, Howard just falls back to his everyday activity of visiting his comatose wife in the hospital. When Howard is called to Housekeeping the next day and is asked to attend a secret meeting, things turn weird. Especially when he is seated in front of Howard, his other self from a parallel world. Howard doesn’t know how to respond and what to do, but apparently, he is needed as the other Howard only trusts this world’s Howard.
Howard soon learns that his wife, Emily (Olivia Williams) is being targeted by an assassin from the parallel universe. It seems that there’s a rogue operative from the other world trying to take down members of the ‘office’ in this world. Before the timid Howard of this dimension knows it, he finds himself in a conspiracy to severely damage his world.
Counterpart is no series that you can just mix and match episodes and loosely follow it on the background. You’ll have to keep paying attention or you might miss rather important details. The flow is rather slow, as there is a lot of information to process, but there’s also a bit of gore and blood to be found to stress the seriousness of what is going on. As mentioned before, this is no casual series, and everything that is going on needs to be properly processed, and even then it’s sometimes hard to properly notice which Howard we’re following. Nonetheless, even though the series has a heavy undertone, it’s still a series worth binging.
Acting performances in Counterpart are simply top-notch. As the pack leader, we have J.K. Simmons who has a massive amount of experience under his belt. It must be rather hard to play two characters that are the same to a certain extent but also worlds apart (literally). Other main roles are given to Olivia Williams, Harry Lloyd, Nazanin Boniadi, Sara Serraiocco, Nicholas Pinnock and Ulrich Thomsen. All of these faces combined create a very diverse and interesting cast of characters. The cast has been chosen with care and they all bring their respective characters to life.
Sadly, there are no extras to be found on the DVD edition of Counterpart. It would have been nice to get some special content revolving around the thoughts behind the series, or how the cast members had to act when their ‘other’ self was on the same set or at least a bit more information about what occurred. We feel this is a missed opportunity to have no extra features on this DVD box.
Conclusion
Counterpart: Season 1 is no series to watch on an empty stomach as you’ll have to keep your wits about. The story value of this series is off the charts and it shows us an interesting new take on the parallel universes theory that has been incorporated in many movies before. If you’re into stories about espionage, murder and a grand conspiracy, then you’ll certainly have a field day when watching this first season.
Counterpart: Season 1 (DVD) - Series Review,
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