‘Family Secrets’ Netflix Series Review - A Joke on Commitments

Family Secrets begins with a pregnant wife running on the streets of Warsaw. She has probably lost her way to the church. The series then skips time frames and takes the audience to the past. Five years earlier, Kaśka was contacting her sister Alicja, but nobody was picking up her phone, and she had a piece of great news to tell her family. Amidst all this, Kaśka forgets that she’s standing near a railway crossing. Pawel, a god-sent man saves her from almost getting under the train. This is where the two main characters of the series first meet.

Fast forward, and it is the day when a party for the first-year medical students is going on. Kaśka again crosses paths with Pawel, and they both now study at the same medical school. They instantly click together, form a great pair, and dance like two souls who’ve known each other for so long. Out of the whole series, this was the best scene. Just like this, the series takes the audience back and forth explaining what all happened before the wedding. 

The main scene around which these flashbacks were revolving was Kaśka’s wedding with Janeczek. The groom was waiting for his bride in the church, and she was nowhere to be seen. Kaśka had doubts regarding this marriage, and the reasons lie in the past scenes that have been shown. Jan is also a surgeon and belongs to a rich problematic family. 

There are wedding dramas that won’t come to an end. Also, the mystery around the father of the child seems to be never-ending. It is only until the final episode that the audience will discover the father of Kaśka’s child. Nobody has a good marriage in this series, and hence, we can predict the fate of this wedding that won’t stop. 

All the characters have their messed-up journeys. The girl that gets the most affected amidst all this is Kaśka. Some parents don’t know how to make their marriage work even after being married for more than two decades, and then some mothers misunderstand their daughters for having an affair with their boyfriends. The two families don’t count among the normal families. This series has less to do with reality and more to do with getting messier with each passing episode. 

Opposite to what was expected in the beginning, this series lacks a good plot. Only fights and cheating form the core of Family Secrets, and the audience should skip this series. The Polish drama claims to be a comedy series and in reality is the complete opposite of it. There were no laugh-worthy scenes, and the viewers will soon realize it. It’s also not that they’ll feel bad for the characters as they don’t deserve our sympathy at all.

Unnecessary suspense is created around the baby’s father and what will Kaśka do. The series wasn’t able to even maintain the mystery as it got pretty obvious by the second episode. The show tried its best to bring something new to the screen but ended up being miserable.

In my opinion, this Polish drama is a lost cause. Initially, the time jumping of frames seemed to be an excellent idea, but when this got repeated again and again, it became tiresome. This drama appears to be exaggerated right from the beginning as it was known that the marriage between the couple wasn’t going to happen. So taking 45 minutes each of those eight episodes to prove the same makes the series a waste of time. 

Final Score – [6/10]
Reviewed by - Riya Singh
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