User reviews

Frankly, I started way it without any expectation. Just the storyline seemed intriguing. I know there are some plot holes, but considering the budget and production house it's pretty decent outcome. Stars gave solid performance, the locations were eye catching. Story of global corporate espionage ring added with a long lost love interest added the spice that was needed to carry the show.

Might not be a HBO/Netflix/Prime production standard but considering everything, it was decent. May be more than decent! Figure it out !

Overall the story is a giant meh. It tries very hard to be important and thrillerish, but ends up being generic and tiresome. The actors are not helping it at all, because they ooze apathy at any given moment, regardless how tense things are becoming. The dialogue is simple, to the point, with no useless emotional elaborations, space for character development, witty lines or anything that would put you in danger of feeling remotely connected or positive to what you're seeing. Basically, everyone just wants to move things along and get them over with.

BUT the desert scenes are beautiful. The shades, the colours, the buildings, the atmosphere they create. It might be a deeply personal thing, I just have something for large spaces filled with pale sand. And oh my goodness - the soundtrack!!! You can just watch the desert shots and listen to the soundtrack, and this could be your ultimate jam! Call me insane, but these are the two things I give 6/10 for. The rest can be recycled.

And all this is served in Abu Dhabi with a German touch... Should/could be something for everyone, but the result is another thriller where renegades and "unsophisticated" specialists attempt to avoid a disaster. As often in (mostly) U. S. series, lenient people become heroes overnight, getting ready for chases and weapons within some hours, and viewers are "confused" using mysterious events and clips from the past... The venue was evidently chosen for their contribution to the series budget :) - although it is exotic and beautiful and makes many to (re)visit the Emirates again.

As for the cast, most performers were unknown to me, except Grégory Fitoussi, but even his role was too ordinary. The leading performances were not too impressive and several characters did not bring additional value to the Series (e.g. Zack and his teen friends). Thus, Mirage has some kind of entertaining value and 6 episodes is not too long, but as there are hundreds of more interesting related series out there, it is not a creation that brings you wow! On novel effects.

First of all, I can't believe some reviewers complain that the protagonists are in their 50s. How old was Tom Cruise or Daniel Craig when they made their last action film? Or is it only an issue when an actress is the protagonist? Marie-Josee Croze was perhaps 48 when she made _Mirage_, and a stunning 48 at that. More importantly, she is still an amazing and mercurial actress, born to play highly compromised women.

The first episode of this miniseries is extremely well shot. The overhead shots, swirling camera motion, the tsunami seen as a reflection in a window superimposed on a disbelieving Croze, are all excellent. Later on the directing gets bogged down in the thriller plot-twists and increasingly relies on hand-held (like "24"), but once in a while there are still well composed, stunning images. And the Abu Dhabi skyline is always an eye candy. I assume the producers get a lot of concessions from the UAE government. The series mostly avoids criticism of UAE, presenting it as a Westernize seaside paradise. It takes pains to depict the police as mostly good guys, half of whom are women who do their own driving!

Unlike "24", but like most European espionage films these days, the subject matter is industrial spying, not terrorism. Too bad the writing is mediocre at best. (Compare this with another Canadian-European coproduction called "Thanksgiving.") The two male protagonists are jerks, but usually jerks have a tiny bit of charisma. As for the villains, they are not just uncharismatic; they are among the worst marksman ever seen. The main reason to see "Mirage" is the ever young and unpredictable Croze draped in head scarves, or cocking her head forward like a panther ready to pounce. It would so much better if she is cast as the presumed-dead spouse and spy. She has been wonderful in revenge films (_Another Silence_) and in conflicted roles set in the Middle East (_Collision_, _The Forgiven_).

The glitzy ex-pat middle east is a big turn off and of course it is a major character as most locations tend to be. But if you can focus past that and get into the emotional heart of the characters then you have some chance of engagement in the thriller aspects of the plot. Marie-Josée Croze, the female lead, holds the screen very well, though some of her motivations were a bit far fetched at times. Clive Standen does tough guy running, fighting, safe breaking, driving dangerously all very well but the emotional close ups are not his forte. Considering this was a coproduction between Euro heavyweights it was not a spectacular success, but remains good, solid viewing that improves as you move through the 6 episodes. Clearly set up for a follow- up series, lets see if they get the cash. I'm sure the cast would like to do it all again.

In the trivia section of this series, following information is given:

"The first TV series produced and released as part of The Alliance, a co-production agreement announced in 2018 between European broadcasting groups France Télévisions (France), Rai (Italy) and ZDF (Germany) in order to pool resources and fund ambitious productions to compete with original productions from American streaming services such as Netflix."

if these European giants come together to produce something that is too hard to bear like this one, they shall as well close the shope and leave..

it was tooo bad..

i watched it french dubbed.. it was even more bad.. i assume in the english original some parts are in english, some parts are in french.. so what they did is they only dubbed the parts where english is spoken.. by a dubbing artist other than the leading actress!!! so what happens is suddenly her voice changes as the scenes flow as she swicthes from english to french and vice versa..

and the production, script qualities match the dubbing quality.. such an epic failure!!! such a big flop!!

... there are the-good-guys & the-bad-guys... & they are both equally important to-a-good-production... this series got the-good-guys-right, but has come up well short on-the-bad-side... those-guys-gals ya-just-luv to-hate... season-two..??

Clive Standen's eyes are too close together and that's about the best thing I can say about this mess! As another reviewer said, the main chick, who is supposed to have a high-powered job seems never to be at work, the son is a pouting little oik and everyone else is surplus to requirements. His Aussie accent is passable.

Short punchy 6 part mini series with a bit of mix off everything. Defintely worth watching

The story line sounded intriguing, but it was soon over shadowed by the sanitised view of Abu Dhabi. It was like what are they doing here? Mixing a travelogue with a spy movie. To anyone who has lived in the Middle East this was so totally unbelievable. As to the plot, if you're going to do ITC security at least try to make make your characters look like they know what they're doing....

Great drama, action, keeps you at the edge of your seat. Refreshing change of landscape and culture. Standen and Claire/Marie have great chemistry. Loved the mix of mother tongues.

There is a bit of everything, a computer genius suddenly realizing 007 is her middle name, long lost lover who is suppose to be 007 but heaven only knows how he managed to stay alive so long, trusting husband for a good measure of stupidity, bad guys who give me hope (if all of them are of the same calibre, world is safe), and a teenager with more common sense than all of the above put together. the only thing missing is a cute family puppy. the heroine is supposed to be working but is never in the office, i would love a job like that. and the fateful love affair reminds me of paul newman and eve marie saint, it again feels like the guy is lovesick for his much older sister. and i haven't even seen the finale yet. such a waste of time.

Disappointing. Despite some potentially good plot elements it just doesn't work. The main characters motivations are stupid and the acting often hammy or flat. Don't waste your time.

Its very refreshing watching a foreign film that isnt a hollywood blockbuster. It is actually believable. Me and my wife liked it!

This series is about a woman who lost her husband during the Tsunami of 2004.

Ten years later she gets her "DreamJob" in Abu Dhabi....... One day she thinks that she sees her husnband ! Could he still be alive ? Or not ......... Or is he ? Or is he not ...............

That sounded very EXCITING ! So i started watching. The series turned out to be unwatchable and very boring. Almost nothing happened. In the 2nd episode there is an overkill of names and characters. I lost track of the story.

This is a pity ! The story has great potential, but didn't deliver on time !

I stopped watching at the end op part 2.

My TV time is limited, and i'm going to spoil it on this.

I don't know how there are people have a good review on this "waste of time"show !!!! It's unbelievable, illogical and unrealistic, trust me and don't watch it, they should call it "waste of time in Desert" instead of "Mirage"

Had some potential with some good looking cast and a great local.

But something got lost in translation with the script and plot. Just messy and almost laughable in places. I don't think you can blame the actors it just didn't make much sense. They could have added more humor or romance to give it a bit more of a lift.

In this "action-packed" film, the main characters are over 50 years old. The dialogues are artificial-flavored clichés. The plot gets confusing in the last 2 episodes. And the makers aren't very smart if you see the 1920 visual cliché with the 2-circle-looking-through-the-binoculars effect.

This movie was obviously a travel show highlighting Abu Dhabi, which was well done. The movie started out well enough but got progressively worse with each episode. It should not have carried on as long as it did and 3 episodes would have been enough. The main characters got very tiresome and especially Clive, who has a poor speaking voice and no spark whatsoever. There is no warmth between the too main stars and the love scenes were very bad. Clive seems to have all the high tech toys, vehicles and guns and lives on a large boat. He is supposed to be a diving instructor but he is never there. Where does all his money come from? Clair has a high profile job and she is never there. The plots and scenes become predictable and you get the feeling that you have seen them all in other movies. Sick of Clive wandering around and showing up all over the place with his shoulder bag and hoodie. Just unbeliveable. Even Clair becomes nauseous.

I just had to turn this off after the first five episodes and could not watch the last one as I was so turned off with the poor acting and dialogue.

It seems that the whole series was created in order to encourage tourism to Abu Dhabi, which is fine if they had previously defined it as such. The plot is like any television conspiracy plot. The game is mediocre. But the photos in Abu Dhabi make you want to visit it, an advertisement for the local Ferrari park, the market alleys and the modern skyline. I wouldn't be surprised if it was funded by the local tourism office.

In short, you can watch it to spend another evening in front of the TV, but don't expect too much.

It seems that there is an attempt to wait for the series Homeland, including the acting of the main actress who tries to wait, without much success, for the main character of Homeland.

Simply put - nothing is believable, unless you are a very simple person and you desperately wish that the world would work the way it's presented in this series.

These people work in the field of security? Believe it or not. Spies? Sure. Tsunami? What? 15 years, sure?

Who wrote this? Who directed this? We know who acted in this, and that's a shame. Yeah, it was the Viking dude camouflaged with a baseball cap that didn't fit his head, and then a bunch of various amateurs.

Despite of all this I managed to watch this till the end. This is because I've watched everything else. Already during the first episode, I had to switch to the moron mode so that I'd get through it, but this disaster continued with even worse plot twists one after other and it looked like it every episode was written a day before they shot it, but hey what can you do if you don't have anything else to do.

Clive Standen, I'm going to forgive you this time and hope you're going to make it. That's purely because of your high level of coolness in the Vikings. Like in the X-files, I want to believe.

I purchased a TV just about 1 year ago. The TV worked great till I went to use it and it would not power on. I called mirage and finally got through to Chris. I could tell by first interactions he wasn't going to help me. He said you can start your warranty process by sending me pictures. A week has gone by and can not get any response. I'm getting a sunbrite. I even had a TV repairman come out to look at it. He wouldn't even touch it. He said that it's just a regular TV the been attempted to be sealed from the weather. He said he can see where there are slight openings that water could get it and who knows what it could have done to the internal wiring.