We’ve watched too much TV to put up with shows that can’t figure out how to lay out its story in a proper manner. A new Netflix thriller from Lebanon has an interesting idea — a counterfeiter needs his ex’s help to make the perfect $100 bill — but the execution of the series’ first episode is lacking.
FRANKLIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A man in a hot rod gets out along the shore and goes to stare at the water. “Seven years ago, I considered myself an artist. A talented artist,” his voice says.
The Gist: Adam (Mohamad Al-Ahmad) is a counterfeiter, and seven years ago he created a perfect $100 bill, with the help of his then-girlfriend Yulia (Daniella Rahme). The bill was so good that even bill counting machines that could detect fakes would be fooled. After they broke up, though, he stopped trying to ply the craft that he learned from his father.
However, seven years later, he finds himself heavily in medical debt, for both his dying father’s cancer treatments and the heart issues his young daughter is having. He got back into the counterfeiting business, but he has not been able to reproduce that perfect C-note, at least not without the help of Yulia.
Adam is still creating less-than-perfect but very useable fakes for a local crime lord. But because the crime lord is taking all the risks, his payouts to Adam are minimal. And the police’s Financial Crimes Bureau just seized Adam’s last shipment.
For him to get out of this debt, Adam knows he has to create the perfect Franklin again, and asks the crime lord to fund the operation, which he thinks will take 20 days. However, Adam’s father knows what else he needs: Yulia.
For her part, Yulia has become a jewel thief, and we see her in a fire-red dress to go to an auction as a part of her plan to steal a million-dollar necklace that’s up for bid. She targets the person she knows will outbid anyone for it, and tries to find him after the auction, but Adam’s father finds her instead, telling her how his son has moved on but implying he may need her.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Franklin — not to be confused with Apple TV+’s Franklin, about the founding father — series has a similar vibe to La Femme Nikita, but with counterfeit money.
Our Take: Franklin was produced in Lebanon, and like a lot of Netflix shows from the Middle East, it’s heavy on production and light on plot. Not only that, it feels like the series keeps in unnecessary details in some scenes and leaves other, more important details out.
A big detail that the show’s writers want us to guess at was exactly what happened that allowed Yulia to get that necklace. She puts a pill in her target’s drink when he knocks on her hotel room door. Then we see her the next day, with the necklace in her possession. Sure, we assume she drugged her target, but did he really have a million-dollar necklace on him? How did she get it? It might have served to let us know exactly how clever she is when planning heists.
But there seem to be a lot of scenes where Adam’s father wants his son to no longer follow in his footsteps, and he decries the fact that he’s spending the last months of his life connected to tubes and needles. Then there are scenes with Zein (Tony Issa) a detective in the Financial Crimes Bureau is dealing with an auntie who is connected somehow, a pregnant wife who seems to be angry with him, and an investigation into the counterfeiting ring that tries to pass off Adam’s bills. None of those stories are quite as clear as how we explained them, though; there are connections to be made that aren’t completed in the first episode, likely because the show’s writers spend too much time with characters we likely won’t get much of the story going forward.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: With the necklace in her possession, Yulia jumps from her balcony to a neighbors in order to escape the police.
Sleeper Star: There’s no one that stands out, aside from the show’s three main characters.
Most Pilot-y Line: The music is so intrusive it’s silly, constantly trying to manufacture tension where there is none. They even have building music for an early scene where Adam tries a C-note he made in a counting machine to see if it passes.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The first episode of Franklin is irritatingly uneven in how it doles out story details, and then takes its time to push its plot forward.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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