The Restaurant – 6.5

If by having Calle proclaim his undying love for Nina, though they’re both married to others, in the final scene, the makers of The Restaurant hoped to hook me for Season 2, they were sadly mistaken. Manipulate me once, shame on you; manipulate me every five minutes, forget it! What started out as a new and intriguing scenario – a restaurant in post-war Stockholm – with interesting characters, started bouncing all over the place, crisis upon crisis. The beautiful Nina, a free-spirited life force starting her own jazz club against all odds, turned into an unattractive dope addict, bad wife and sister, worse mother. Younger brother Peter, who seemed good, smart and calm, began liaisons with a gangster and the unpleasant, greedy wife of his boss. Gustaf, repulsive from the beginning, alternated between dumb and evil acts without being shown off the stage. And, somehow, the colorless waitress Margareta was elected chair of the restaurant workers’ union, bringing feminism, gay rights and workers’ rights to Sweden while raising a young son as a single mother. By the end of episode 10, there was no one I wanted to spend any more time with. Downton Abbey also occasionally overplotted, but the twists and turns, if too frequent, were more inherently plausible, and the people were so much more charming.