I don’t get round to watching a lot of TV these days, but this month I did watch the new short series on Amazon Prime set in the John Wick universe; The Continental. I have to say it is a real cracker.

Being only three episodes long, albeit fairly long episodes, it does not outstay it’s welcome and get bogged down with too much complicated plot like so may modern TV shows do. Not only that but it is just brilliant to look at. The action takes place mainly in the New York of the 1970s, with some flashbacks to the 1950s and although I never went to New York in the 1970s (it was the late 1980s when I first went there) it is just how I imagine it to be, before it got itself cleaned up a bit. If I had a time machine then 1970s New York is somewhere that would be high on the list of places I would want to go to (along with 1930s New York and 1890s London)

The scene-setting is enhanced and reinforced by the soundtrack which contains some absolute classics of the era along with some that completely fit the mood at the right time. Right at the start there is Donna Summer’s I Feel Love during a New Year’s Eve party and that totally nails the timeframe. Boney M and Baccara also crop up, but so do Yes (Roundabout), Supertramp, and Pink Floyd. Not all the songs are from the same year because I think the intention is to keep the exact year a bit vague but it also includes some songs that completely put you back in that time, if you were fortunate to be around in the 70s, like Baker Street and If You Leave Me Now. I expect that the rights to the music in this show represented a large chunk of the budget.

The only change I would have made to the soundtrack would be to have it end with the original 1975 version of New York Groove by Hello rather than the Ace Frehley cover, but at least the cover was still safely in the 70s so no real harm done.

As for the action itself, it is completely in line with the John Wick films. In other words, entertaining, very, very violent, over the top in places, and requiring a huge amount of willing suspension of disbelief. Just like in the John Wick films you see a lot of professional assassins being terrible shots.

Really if you like the John Wick films, or at least the first three of them, then this is a no-brainer. There is still some scope to further explore Winston and Charon’s story, but I am hoping that any future series instead explores the Bowery Queen/Bowery King aspect.