Magic City Season 1 - DVD

Content: Miami Beach, late 1950s: With blood, sweat and tears Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has fulfilled the dream of his own hotel. But all alone he has not been able to open the luxury hotel Miramar Playa. For that, he needed the help of his silent partner, mob boss Ben The Butcher Diamond (Danny Huston). In front of his second wife, the former showgirl Vera (Olga Kurylenko), and in front of his children Danny(Christian Cooke), Stevie (Steven Strait) and little Lauren, he keeps up the facade of the righteous hotel owner and family man. But in secret he fights with all means to be allowed to keep his hotel. And that's when he can't help but have to ask Ben Diamond for a favor.

Because after two major hurricanes and trouble with the unions, who want to pressure Evans into joining them, the Miramar's future hangs in the balance. But when union boss Mike, with whom Ike had a close friendship, disappears without a trace, he slowly realizes the dangerous means his silent partner is playing with. The political situation in Cuba, the relationship of Danny and his childhood sweetheart, maid Mercedes (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) and Stevie's affair with Lily (Jessica Marais), the pure sin who turns out to be Ben Diamond's wife of all people, ensure that the foundations of the hotel are shaken time and time again and Ike's big dream threatens to collapse in on itself...

It's obvious that Magic City was made in the wake of the success of series like Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire. Dramaturgically the happening around the Miramar hotel is somewhat more simply knitted, than these two nevertheless clearly more complex models. Instead, the broadcaster STARZ relies on suspense, lots of sex and a little violence, just as it did with its Spartacus series. And that works really well in the case of Magic City. On the one hand, this is due to the very appealing visuals. Very warm, inviting colors, a trendy 50s décor, fancy cars and beautiful people - sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes not dressed at all - make the series a feast for the eyes.

Also the series scores with a very good cast. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is convincing as a hotelier who has a good heart per se, but is willing to cross moral boundaries for his dream. Danny Huston is wonderfully sleazy as a mob boss with an icy menace that has extremely high entertainment value. Jessica Marais plays Huston's series wife, a seductive siren who turns more than just Stevie's head. Olga Kurylenko, also known from numerous feature films, on the other hand, doesn't get to show much more of her talent than being good-looking. But for the role of the former showgirl, who desperately tries to step out of her husband's oversized shadow and get something significant going herself, she is absolutely aptly cast.

As already mentioned, the dramaturgy is very straightforward and not overly complicated. Nevertheless, the individual storylines of the first season provide very good entertainment. Whether it's the attempts of sleazy Attorney General Jack Klein to deliver Ben Diamond as well as Ike Evans to the knife, Stevie's dangerous affair with Lily, the budding relationship between Danny and his childhood sweetheart Mercedes, or the desperate attempts of her father, hotel manager Victor Lazaro (Yul Vázquez), to free his wife from Castro's rebel-occupied Cuba, all of these plot elements make Magic City an extremely entertaining and engaging series.

It's a shame that after only two seasons, it's already over. Because after the eight episodes of this first season, the events from Miami reveal a potential for many more entanglements and explosive escalations. After all, it will continue after the open finale of the first season. Let's hope that we in Germany will not have to wait too long for the final episodes. Absolutely recommendable!

Picture + Sound: The picture quality of the DVD does absolute justice to the very good 50s look of the series. The color scheme looks very authentic, with the warm hues in particular coming across powerfully. The picture sharpness is on a very good level and even in the darker scenes there is hardly any visible loss of quality. The audio is in a coherent Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, though strong surround moments are rather scarce here. It's more the ambient noises and more subtle sound effects that ensure some life comes to the multi-channel. Otherwise, the dialogue and great soundtrack set the tone, with both sounding well-matched from the speakers. Good!

Extras: As a bonus, the box has to offer on the third DVD some featurettes worth watching. In addition to a making of (approx. 12:59 min.), there are shorter features on the cars in the series (approx. 1:29 min.), the style of the series (approx. 3:53 min.), setting construction (approx. 1:29 min.), music (approx. 7:26 min.), and the real Miami Beach (approx. 3:21 min.). While most of these featurettes are simply too short to offer any real in-depth information. However, these encores are well worth watching for fans of the series!

Conclusion: Magic City is an entertaining drama series that sits somewhere between Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, but dramaturgically isn't quite in the same league as those award-winning series. The cast, set, music and camerawork, on the other hand, are absolutely top-notch. The production itself is tight enough to quickly build suspense despite some clichés and draw the viewer deep into the world of Miramar Playa. With a great soundtrack, an engaging look, plenty of naked skin and a wonderfully nasty Danny Huston, the series then manages to provide eight episodes of entertaining, thrilling and engaging entertainment, which is complemented on DVD by a coherent realization of picture and sound, as well as a few extras worth watching. For this there is a clear bottom line: absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp