There are way too many marketing experts out there, but not a lot of them are worth their salt. There can be multiple reasons for this issue. For starters, it’s possible that the people who are taking up these jobs are in it just for the money, and they don’t think that they can improve the landscape with their ability to market things. Then there are the institutions that are teaching these people to market things, which are filled with teachers who know jack. And finally, we have the folks who are hiring these “geniuses” in the hopes that they’ll skyrocket their company to fame overnight, only to end up replicating the “blind leading the blind” meme. One of the most recent examples of this phenomenon was the marketing around the finale of Peacemaker Season 2, which was touted by James Gunn himself as a setup for Man of Tomorrow, an episode filled with amazing cameos, and an hour of the most jaw-dropping storytelling humanity has ever seen. When the finale was released, audiences got a big old nothingburger, and I just wondered who told Gunn to overpromise so heavily. Similarly, after watching The Asset, I am asking the question: who had the bright idea of marketing this show as an “action-driven crime series”?
Adam August’s The Asset, which he has co-written with Frederik Ringtved and Samanou Acheche Sahlstrom, with the episodes being directed by Sahlstrom and Kasper Barfoed, starts things off with a murder of a PET (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste) agent on a plane. Officers of PET, Folke and Jensen, seek out a replacement who can bring down Miran and his whole network of drug peddlers. And the individual who turns out to be the perfect candidate for the job is Tea. Now, instead of taking the straightforward route into Miran’s operation, Tea is tasked with targeting Miran’s wife, Ashley. She has 2 main obsessions: jewelry and her daughter, Sofia. So, Tea creates the persona of Sara, a jeweler with a heart of gold, and immediately gets into Ashley’s good books by being kind to Sofia and offering a social media collaboration opportunity to Ashley. However, the closer that “Sara” gets to Ashley, the more suspicious Miran gets about Sara’s background, thereby making it difficult for Tea to gather intel against Miran. Therefore, the tension around whether or not Tea will be able to take down Miran and emancipate Ashley and Sofia before Miran exposes Tea’s true identity is what forms the crux of the narrative.
Now, based on that description of The Asset’s plot, if you haven’t watched the show yet, you might assume that, yes, there are plenty of avenues to have “action-driven” scenes involving crime. The IMDb page for the show has categorized it as a crime drama that’s bound to thrill you. And, last but not least, the “about” section on Netflix has said that the show is gritty and suspenseful. I can confidently say that the writing barely functions as a drama, and its attempts at shifting into the aforementioned genres are laughable. I suppose the writers thought that they were onto something by presenting this Serpico-esque premise and then making the whole thing about domestic abuse. But the main issue here is that the writers’ observations about said domestic abuse and the need for women to support other women in understanding that they are victims are pretty shallow. Credit where credit is due, the position in which they leave Tea and Ashley in the ending of the show is interesting. However, I can’t bring myself to get excited about the potential of 2 characters’ arcs in a Season 2 that hasn’t been announced yet after going on a tedious journey with them where they got sloshed most of the time.
Sahlstrom and Barfoed, along with composers Robin Hannibal and August Rosenbaum, cinematographers David Bauer and Jonas Berlin, production designers Kenneth Damsgaard and Josephine Farso, costume designer Sara Forghani, make-up designer Maria Refsgaard, editors Nikoline Logstrup and Anders Villadsen, and sound designers Thomas Franklin Huus and Bo Asdal, give The Asset that self-serious aesthetic. Therefore, if you don’t take it seriously, you are making a grave mistake. But yeah, apart from having the look and feel of a sombre Scandi noir, these guys don’t have anything to offer. I’m genuinely baffled as to what convinced the marketing team to claim that this show is “action-driven,” “thrilling,” or “suspenseful.” There are hardly any action sequences in the whole thing. If the only thing you have ever watched is the 10-hour-7-minute-long documentary of paint drying, then you’ll be at the edge of your seat. Was the marketing team shown a different cut of the show than the one that we watched? What the hell happened here? The only time I felt anything in this 6-hour slog was when a split-diopter shot showed up at the tail end of the sixth episode. But then I realized that maybe it had been achieved in post and not through a split-diopter lens, and my excitement flatlined again.
Coming to the performances in The Asset, there’s something about Clara Dessau and Maria Cordsen’s whole dynamic that goes against the point of the whole show. I mean, I am supposed to believe that, despite being at opposite ends of the moral spectrum, this police officer is empathizing with this victim of oppression and abuse, thereby making me root for this unconventional friendship. However, the lack of chemistry between Dessau and Cordsen doesn’t allow that feeling to come through. Sofia is supposed to be the soul of the show because saving her from this mess is something that the protagonists and the antagonists want to do. And yet, Lara Ly Melic Skovgaard is never given any scenes that’d have an emotional impact on you. Afshin Firouzi, Nicolas Bro, Soheil Bavi, Dan Boie Kratfeldt, Arian Kashef, Klaus Tange, and the rest of the men in the cast are way too one-note for me to even care about them. All in all, the show is a disappointment. I think if it would have been marketed as per the narrative, which is an out-and-out drama about 2 women in a strange predicament, I wouldn’t have been so miffed. That said, if you are claiming you have action, crime, suspense, and thrill in store for me, you better deliver on that promise or hire better marketing experts.
