When I first heard about The Get Down earlier this year I was really looking forward to it. The first images looked good and also the description of the show sounded interesting:

“The Get Down” is a mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to a new art form. Set in New York in 1977, this music-driven drama series chronicles the rise of hip-hop and the last days of disco -_ told through the lives, music, art and dance of the South Bronx kids who would change the world forever.

As a fan of hip hop this was a setting that immediately was something I wanted to know more about. Through the years I’ve learned a lot about the music, how it developed and seeing that in the form of a show on Netflix seemed awesome. The show has been written and produced by Baz Luhrmann, who has done things like Romeo+Juliet, Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby in the past. Someone who is very capable to show music in an exciting way which is visually pleasing. Besides that, New York in the seventies is a fascinating setting. Gangs were still very active (the documentary Rubble Kings is a good one to learn more about that). There was a lot of crime and buildings were set ablaze in order to collect insurance money. With a budget of 10 million per episode my expectations were high when I started watching this six part first season. Continue reading →