Family Business is another foreign Acorn TV exclusive, this time a French production. Usually, I try to avoid mentioning subtitles as they are often considered a hindrance to watching some brilliant content. As the award-winning director, Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) said in his Golden Globe acceptance speech, "Once you overcome the one-inch tall barriers of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films." In this case, however, Acorn TV has not done their due diligence and showed a lack of attention to detail.
I say this because the subtitles are the biggest negative in the series. Unlike other shows that place all of their subtitles at the bottom of the screen, Family Business occasionally switches and places the subtitles on the top of the screen. This is a reasonably common practice if the background is too light at the bottom, so the switch to the top is meant to ensure the text is still legible. However, Acorn TV's video player does not necessarily allow this to happen. The player as it is embedded is in a more widescreen aspect ration which truncates the top of the video, cutting off the subtitles that appear there. Viewing the video in full screen may alleviate the issue slightly, but it all depends on the screen shape of the device. The wider the screen, the more of the "upper" subtitles that are lost. If it happened once, I would not be concerned, but this happens on several occasions and becomes disruptive after a while.
The second area of concern regarding the subtitles is a feature that I have only seen used in this series. Whenever subtitles pop up on-screen, the entire image darkens noticeably. Once the subtitle disappears the screen lightens up again. Anytime there is not constant dialogue (or a complete lack of dialogue) the video effectively flickers as if a toddler has realised he can reach the light switch or an office setting that refuses to replace the dodgy fluorescent lights. It is a subtle lighting change, but it is still noticeable. Would it be enough to cause an epileptic seizure? I could not say. It certainly took several episodes to overcome the distracting nature of it. But let's look past this and discuss the actual content of the series.
There is something inextricably thrilling about legal dramas. Something about an empirically evidence-based judgement system that is resolved by subjective means. It allows any single piece of evidence or information to swing a case around and led to the opposite result. Crushing defeat or magnanimous victory, it could easily go either way.
Family Business manages to work within the genre well, despite having very few courtroom scenes. The series predominantly takes place at the firm, and wastes little time in injecting drama into the lives of our primary characters. With a similar structure to most cop procedural and medical dramas, Family Business is an episodic series that swiftly changes into a more serialised format as our protagonists get dragged into their own businesses as a recipient rather than the donor.
There is a clear feminist streak in the show, with a primarily female-led cast and a focus on family law as opposed to criminal proceedings. This does mean that as is becoming more and more commonplace in female-led shows, the male characters are portrayed in a derogatory fashion, as either womanizing, misogynistic, manipulative, narcissistic, unintelligent, or just plain criminal, with their only redeeming factor coming in the form of an aesthetically pleasing appearance. if you can look past the biased nature of the genders being portrayed, however, there is much to enjoy.
The show tackles many subjects from emotional abuse and manipulation to alcohol and gambling addictions, shared custody, to blackmail and inherited assets. With near-on a full hour allocated to each case, Family Business delves into the subjects in reasonable depth, without getting too complicated for those of us that are uninitiated in the judicial system of France.
If Acorn TV can fix these subtitle issues before the show premieres, Family Business has the potential to be as popular and engaging as Boston Legal or Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit.
Originally posted to: https:djin.nz/Kr8697