Series “A Mighty Opponent” on Arte: No time for a quickie

A young woman lies in bed and wakes up because blood is dripping from the blanket onto her, of all things, her cleavage… The next scene takes place 24 hours earlier. The same young woman, now in a stylish high-rise apartment, has just completed her morning fitness program, there’s really no time left for a quickie with her well-built boyfriend on the kitchen island, the career-conscious business lawyer (Caroline Dhavernas) is in the middle of arranging a 200 million deal. Splatter horror or legal soap? Neither nor.

“Against the background of conflicting economic interests and ecological needs, the lawyer for a Canadian mining company gets caught up in a web of fraud and betrayal,” is how the broadcaster Arte advertises the Canadian series (director: Sophie Deraspe). In the French-language original it’s called “Ravages”, which means something like “devastation”, and doesn’t sound quite as bland and arbitrary as the German title: “A mighty opponent”. And basically you want to be happy when a series doesn’t come from the USA.

The small countries Denmark and Israel have made history with their series miracles. Now Canada has at least half as many inhabitants as Germany, not to mention the area. But standard is the country, which the incumbent American president had already announced that he would incorporate, before Greenland came into his focusanother point of sympathy – but more of a dwarf. In the 1990s there was the charming youth series “Amanda and Betsy” – more recent successes such as “Orphan Black” and “Vikings“ were no longer purely Canadian productions.

So now “Ravages”, devastation. The Minexore company leaves them behind wherever it mines lithium and pollutes the environment with cyanide. People die of cancer or are murdered when they protest. Not only in faraway Guatemala, but now also in Canada, in Montreal, where one of the leaders of the protest has quartered above the apartment where the young lawyer’s mother lives. The daughter is lying in her bed when the blood from the activist’s slashed neck drips through the ceiling, see above.

This makes it clear right away that this series places no less value on anything than subtlety and nuance. The “powerful opponent” from the German title is a villain as he is in the (bad) book: cocky, unscrupulous, just plain evil. The head of the commercial law firm in his service (it is of course the law firm where the heroine wants to make a career) appears more conciliatory – and therefore appears all the more greasy. On the (good) opposite side: a murder investigator (Robin Aubert), who on the outside – with long hair, a shaggy beard and a cardigan – looks like the Dude from “The Big Lebowski”, but seems to have copied his methodology from Inspector Columbo. With his goofy demeanor he’s just covering up his insight.

At his side, the young lawyer soon changes from Saul to Paul, she moves from the noble law firm to the camp of environmental activists – and with it the style: “Now let’s give Minexore a good slap in the mouth! Let’s go!” The moderately successful dubbing (by Studio Hamburg Synchron GmbH) doesn’t make their development any more credible. That would be nice, but unfortunately “Ravages” doesn’t herald a Canadian series miracle.