Rough Diamonds

 A flemish / international series now streaming on Netflix, Rough Diamonds tells the tale of a jewish diamond family that came into rough waters.

And I still worked in the district when it was filmed, so let's see if we are grabbing some screentime!

Noah is the black sheep of the Wolfson family, having refused to step into the diamond business as his tate wanted.  He returns to Belgium from his job in London when his younger brother Yanki commits suicide, a result of high gambling debts.  But there is more at hand, which brings the company in dire waters.

 

It turns out he has been making deals with the Albanian maffia, who are using diamonds for laundring their drug money.  The family has to pay up his debts, as Noah finds a solution, even though it might not be totally legal.  he has been living a shady life it seems, as his mother in law is the leader of a gang in London, running a druglab herself, and she brokers the deal between them.

 

When, in order to fullfil an order of the maffia that was necessary to be made for the company to survive, Eli and Adina vote on an indian diamant trader to become the next president of the Bourse, their dad collapses from a stroke, and Noah starts to return to the ways of his family. 

When his father dies, Eli tries to get the company from all three heirs, influenced by Benny.  But the plan fails, and instead Adina is named sole successor by their mom.  However, she refuses and splits the shares along the three of them, while Benny is removed and blocked from the market.  But Noah is put in a hard spot, as Kendra and the Albanian maffia want to continue their whitewashing drugtraffic.

Eli decides to go co-operate with the police, going to a secret banker that laundry's money.  In the meantime, Noah has to set up a meeting between the Albanians and a Brazilian minister, but he backs out in the end.  This results in his family and company being threatened, and when they even go as far as approach his son, he decides to try and take matters in his own hands.  With the police on their tail as Eli backed out of becomming a witness to hand information about money laundring, Noah goes to steal diamonds from a company a friend of his works at.

But he is planning a set-up with those stones, and even though it goes sour at first, he manages to solve the issues for both himself, the company and even the district.  Even though it is at the expense of his family in London as he has to make the hard choice of which one to save, and which one to send to jail...

To be honest, I liked the series because I was there when it was filmed and it is fun to see the buildings and all again (and the mistakes in layout on how it is presented on screen versus how the district actually is), but the story itself... far less.  And it was quite unrealistic on some points I can`t disclose.

The answer to the screentime btw is: 0.  Seems I ended on the cutting table, so after all the regional television appearances in my life, I guess I`ll have to wait some more before I break out through Netflix x-D.  Oh well, there is always OnlyFans I guess...