De Bende van Jan De Lichte

 A high budget flemish television series, and a historically based one to boot.

Not to mention one of my ex-collegues at work is playing a small part in it!

De Bende van Jan De Lichte takes places in Flanders of 1747, a time where the rich exploit the poor to the highest level, and banishing them for no serious reason.  But these poor souls are gathering in the woods, and when a deserter, Jan De Lichte, returns to his homeregion, he is affronted by the differences.

He decides to start organising the poor people into a band, out to rob from the rich in order to stake out a better life for themselves.  In the city, a new baljuw, Baru, has the best intentions but soon finds how decadent the ruling caste has become.  But Baru harbours a secret, in that he fell in love with his informant, an orphan girl turned prostitute.

Jan's friend, Tincke, in the meantime had crossed Ijzeren Simon, a crimelord and people russler.  He needs to betray Jan to get back in his favour, but Jan goes to meet Simon, resulting in the latter being killed by his own son Schele.

Baru uses his information to capture Jan though, and he is hanged.  The series jumps one year forward, with Jan's love wed away against her will and Baru now on the city council.  But somehow miraculously Jan returns from the death as a pilgrim, killing the local corrupt priest.  But as the city prospers on the backs of the poor and their forced labour, they approve the digging of a canal, which would ask even more from these exiled souls.

It turns out Jan was saved by the executioner himself, and now he is reorganising the exiles into a community that wants to start their own, independent village, helped by the gold they unknowingly found from the postal carriage robbery.  The next victim he takes his vengeance on is the major, putting him to the torch alive.  Baru, now acting major, knows he will be next so he manipulates the french soldiers in the area to extract a heavy vengeance on the exiles.  They capture Jan, and he is put to death on the iron wheel.  But as Baru walks home, a young exile girl appears and stabs him in the guts, leaving him to die in some back alley...

Now truth to be told, I`ve seen far better flemish productions then this.  The pace feels slow and a bit all over the place, and at times it was honestly a drag to binge more then 2 episodes in a row.  And face it, the titular character would never be dead by the end of episode 7 out of 10... so you just knew there would be another twist on that part.

Visually impressive?  Very certainly so!  Enjoyable? No, not really.