I didn't expect much of this series; it doesn't seem to have a high budget, and it features Kern András as the lead actor - his career consists of playing the same wacky, zany detective in basically every one of his features, and, worst of all, it was made in 1993 - the Hungarian movie has been on a slow and constant decline since the golden era of the 60's, one could count the number of outstanding domestic productions made in any decade since the 90's on one hand.
Having seen Privát kopó, however, I feel that it would deserve a bit more attention, mainly because I didn't notice many of the bane of so many of Hungarian productions, especially of those made since ~1990 - the feigned conversation elements, phony and fabricated dialogues (although sometimes there were a few of these in Privát Kopó as well), and typical characteristics of mediocre (or worse) movies, like bad acting in general, faults in the story, etc.
Some of the elements reoccurringly appearing in Privát kopó that I've especially enjoyed were:
- the witty dialogues between characters - surprisingly, they felt credible to me most of the time.
- it captured the vibe of early 90's in Hungary very well - I couldn't name a single production capturing the era more authentically (though that might be due to my lack of erudition in movies from that period; for instance, ContiCar, a car rental service which existed in real life, supplied many of the fancy (or less fancy) cars in the series, and their real-life story of going bust around 1995 makes for a story of the same caliber as that of an episode in Privát kopó)
- the mini-series showcases a surprisingly high number of well-known actors from that period: Eszenyi Enikö, Cserhalmi György, Bezerédi Zoltán, Verebes István, etc. Most characters might lack in their depth, but for what it is, their performance was entertaining to me.
To mention a few weak points, the episodes were very loosely connected to each other, they were way too episodic. The characters could also have been developed more.
Deep inside I feel this series would deserve a 7/10, but because quality content is such a scarce, I am a bit biased and incline towards an 8.
