ETC: Review fo EVERYWHERE I GO: Arguing Architects Attract

September 20, 2020

Dizi (Turkish for "sweeping epic") is the word used to refer to Turkish TV drama series, since they began in the 1980s.  At present, Turkey is one of the leading producers of TV drama series for export. Currently, Turkey had even overtaken Mexico, the source of famous TV soap operas like "Marimar," which was the first Filipino-dubbed foreign soap opera on local TV in the mid-1990s. Despite this status of Turkey in the industry, there has yet to be a Turkish dizi on local TV, until now. 

ETC Channel began operations in 2004 as a free TV channel for lifestyle and reality shows, targeting mainly the female demographic. This year, ETC took the major plunge to acquire three popular recent Turkish dizis and have them dubbed into Filipino for the Filipino TV audience. These are: "Endless Love" (2015), "Hayat" (2016) and this one "Everywhere I Go" (2019) which is the maiden offering of ETCerye, the nightly prime-time program block of the ETC Channel. 

"Everywhere I Go" is a story of two architects. Demir Erendil (Furkan Andic) was a serious, no-nonsense chap, very traditional in his taste, very formal in his work ethics. In total contrast, Selin Sever (Aybüke Pusat) was a lively, friendly chatterbox, trendy in style and informal at work. One day, Demir came home from after working in Japan, and found that Selin was living in his house. It turned out that they each bought one-half of that house from two sisters, Selin from Tita Leyla (Ayse Tunaboylu) and Demir from Tita Lucie (Binnur Serbetçioglu). 

Later that same day, Selin went to work at her office in the architectural firm called Artemim. She was in for the shock of her life when she found out that her new nemesis Demir was actually taking over Artemim, and not their owner's son Isaac (Ali Yagci), who was her friend. During his first staff meeting, Demir immediately imposed his strict set of rules over everybody. This included a provision that there should be no romance in the workplace, which affected Selin's newly-engaged co-workers, Bora (Ali Barkin) and Merve (Deniz Isin).

All of this situational set-up all happened within the very busy first episodes of the series. It was fun to see familiar rom-com tropes and characters in this series from a country whose Eurasian culture we are not entirely familiar with. Most of the foreign drama series we watched before are from Mexico (with whom we share historical ties being colonies of Spain) or from neighboring Asian countries, like Korea, Japan, China or Thailand (with whose cultures we share more or less similar values). 

Most of the time, the only side of Istanbul we see in movies before was Sultanahmet or the historical Old City -- the side with Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace or the Grand Bazaar. This series is set on the other side of the Bosphorus Strait, with the progressive and stylish contemporary architecture and city landscape. It was interesting to see modern Istanbul for a change, and see the lively millennial characters of this series in their carefree fashion and habits. 

Turkey has the reputation of having some of the most good-looking people in the world, but we have not really seen many of them on our side of the world. The attractive actors and actresses in this series will definitely fit in anyone's definition of beautiful or handsome. Aybüke Pusat was feisty and headstrong as Selin, as her life suddenly became topsy-turvy. Furkan Andic was very imposing as the young boss Demir in the initial episodes but we expect to see more facets to his personality in the next episodes. Ali Yagci had strong screen presence in his few scenes as Isaac, a character who was still quite mysterious at this point.

Based on the first episodes, "Everything I Go" promises to be a light-hearted and very engaging rom-com involving some very spirited characters. The two lead actors have a strong chemistry together even if they were still supposed to be antagonistic to each other at the start. The first episodes seem so full of events already, yet there are many more episodes ahead. I guess we can expect a lot of more delightful twists and turns along the way for this complicated story developing between Selin and Demir, and their friends. 

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"Everywhere I Go" had a three episode debut special last September 19, 2020 at 8 pm. Regular showing begins on September 21, 2020, to be shown from Monday to Friday at 8 pm.