Family Secrets Review: Feels Like a Hamster on a Wheel

Family Secrets (Gry Rodzinne) is a Polish romantic mystery drama series, released on Netflix on 31 August. The series is directed by Łukasz Ostalski and the screenplay is written by Agnieszka Pilaszewska. There are 8 episodes in total with a runtime of about 42-53 minutes.

The cast of the series includes Eliza Rycembel as Kaśka, Izabela Kuna, Małgorzata Mikołajczak, Piotr Pacek, Bartosz Gelner, Edyta Olszówka, Paweł Deląg, Marek Kalita, Adrian Zaremba, Agnieszka Suchora, Marcin Korcz and Anna Romantowska.

-Family Secrets Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-

It follows the wedding ceremony of a medical student with a wealthy plastic surgeon. On the wedding day, the families of the bride and groom realize that the only thing they have in common is secrets and lies. The secrets of both parties are revealed during the ceremony and the wedding guests are witnesses of it all.

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The series starts with a pregnant bride running around town, while people are waiting for her in the church. Unable to find whosoever she was looking for, we are taken 5 years back when a young Kaska is walking in the same part of the town trying to reach her sister Alicja and Mom. Being so engrossed in her phone, she doesn’t realise that she is standing on the tram tracks and is saved by a man from getting hurt.

We get to know that Kaska has gotten into medical school and the man who saved her is Pawel. The show takes the audience back and forth from the present day to flashbacks throughout. Through flashbacks, we see how Kaska and Pawel find each other again at a party and they both are going to the same medical school, where their relationship blossoms. Then we are taken 7 months back from the present day, where Kaska is not able to find Pawel anywhere and presumably he has disappeared.

We are then introduced to other characters like the groom Jan, who had a girlfriend named Anka, 7 months ago but now he is marrying Kaska and waiting for her at the altar. He is a plastic surgeon, so is his father Emil and his mother, Dorota is a Professor at the university. His friend Robert is an architect who is dating Alicjya, who works as a make-up artist.

Jan comes from a troubled family where his father often cheats on his mother, which is a known fact and the parents are always fighting because of it. However, they don’t get separated and are even present at the wedding, when Kaska’s parents are not even there. We see that 10 months ago, the bride’s parents Malgosia and Marek got into an argument, where the father wants to take a job in another city and Malgosia doesn’t want to move by leaving her job and life here.

Like Emil and Dorota, Malgosia and Marek are a couple with many troubles and their children have to witness it all and take the brunt of it. Now that we are familiar with the characters and their issues, coming to the main plot, everything happens at the wedding venue and all the information is revealed by the flashbacks.

Nobody knows Kaska is pregnant with whose baby, is it Jan’s or Pawel’s or somebody else’s entirely? Nor does the bride let on the critical information to anyone which causes some confusion and fights. She is at the altar but doesn’t seem like she wants to get married. However, whenever she does make up her mind and walks up to the front, something else happens and we are taken on another tangent of the story.

It’s like a cat and mouse game, where whenever you feel like the chase is about to get over, it starts all over again. We get new information and perspectives in every episode which leads to the same question of where is or what happened to Pawel and will the couple get married or not.

Summing Up: Family Secrets

The Polish series (Gry Rodzinne) is one of the most bizarre series (in a good way) I have seen in a while. It has taken the concept of a girl trying to reach out to her boyfriend, who has disappeared and created various layers of storylines around it. It is majorly a mystery, which creates suspense till the end, around what happened to Pawel and if the wedding is happening or not.

But the events that happen in between are comedic in nature, without intending to be. The secrets that are revealed by various characters bring in a new twist to the story. It feels almost overdramatic with so many characters fainting one after the other, whenever something shocking is revealed to them.

Then again if they weren’t such dramatic peeps, they won’t be in this mess. The show brings something new to the audiences and even stimulates our minds, trying to join the dots like solving a murder mystery. Even the title of the show in yellow letters seems like someone cut out the letters from a newspaper or magazine and put them together; as shown in crime documentaries where a kidnapper sends an anonymous letter, asking for ransom and the detectives try to find clues from it.

Family Secrets is currently streaming on Netflix.

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