by Michael McCarthy
I finished watching the excellent season 2 of The Believers on Netflix. Someone recently called it “Ozark with monks” and that’s not a bad way to describe it. It focuses on these three young people who help a temple where monks reside raise money. They do raise money for the temple but they also keep a lot of the money for themselves. But, of course, very bad things happen along the way. The tone reminds me slightly of Breaking Bad. In any case, I highly recommend it. Very suspenseful. And it shows you so much about a culture that you’re probably not familiar with. For example, people give these temples lots of money to “make merit,” which is basically like giving the monks money to buy yourself good karma or dharma. From watching this series, one gets the impression that a lot of people in Thailand donate lots of money to “make merit.” Watching this series almost makes me want to go to Thailand and start a temple so I can get people to give me money to buy themselves good luck.
In season 2 of The Believers, a female politician has taken family members of the young people hostage to make them help her raise money for a temple and a hospital. Of course, she’s not really interested in helping people with the hospital. It’s largely a scam so she can raise the equivalent of millions of dollars. And our trio of young people have to find a way out of that situation because they have a feeling that this politician is going to kill them once she reaches her goal and no longer needs them. All in all, I think I liked season 1 a bit more than season 2 but both were indeed fantastic. I highly recommend this series.
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