Ourika on Prime Video: How much is the Booba and Co-Muscle series worth?

What does the cart say?

In 2005, in a town on the outskirts of Paris that has been in turmoil, the Jable family reigns supreme over cannabis trafficking. While neighborhoods burn, a major drug bust explodes the clan. Driss, the youngest son, is forced to take over the family business, even though he planned a career in finance. Facing him, William, a rookie and ambitious neighborhood cop, is determined to take him down. Their meteoric parallel rise will change their fortunes forever.

Who is in Urika’s casting?

Rapper Ellie Jaffa, aka Bubba, makes his French fiction debut with Clement Godard in his first series and takes on a supporting role for the first time on the small screen.

To move the cart, we have a trio of charismatic leads full of energy: Adam Bessa, seen in Tyler Rake and its sequel, as well as Mosul and Harka, Noham Eje, seen in the Bardot series and the films Les Amandiers and An Affair of. Honor and Salim Kechiouche (La vie d’Adèle, Mektoub My Love, Lupine, L’Enfant du Paradis).

The rest of the cast includes other strong personalities such as Max Gomis (La Gravité), Sawsan Abès (Rue des Dames), Marven Zaibat aka “Usky” (66-5), Abde Maziane (Engrenages, 66-5), Rayan Bouaza ( November , Karim Aissaoui (I3P), Valentin Pradier (66-5), Meriem Serba (L’Esquive, Les Miens) and Jova-Angelis Tishikaya, in his first role.

Cart, worth watching?

When an ex-cop and a successful rapper come together to create a series, it can create sparks (and good ones!). Friends of several years, Clement Godart and Bubba decide to tell a simple but effective story: the rise of a young policeman and a young robber, whose destinies are forever linked.

Inspired by real events such as the François Thierry case and the abuses of the war on drugs, Cart is based on both documented social subject and reality on the ground and suburbanites Clement Godard and Bubba invented by screenwriters Clement Gourney, Sabine Dabadieu, Vincent L’Antoine, Sylvie Chanteau and Mehdi Fikri. Writing talent, directed by Collection Director Marin Franco (Engrenages).

From the first episodes, we feel the ambition to offer a French series that is well produced and calibrated for its audience, with inspirations ranging from The Wire to Gomorrah, with a small French touch that we found in Engrenages.

Urika fits perfectly into the police thriller genre, taking on classic codes with complex investigations, unexpected alliances, outright betrayals and highly violent confrontations, and the series is set during the 2005 riots.

The action is clearly muscular with the direction of Marcela Said (Lupin, Gangs of London) and Julien Despo (Profilage, Paris Police 1900, Les 7 vies de Léa) to capture chases, explosions, arrests and other confrontations that reflect the constant intrigue. cart.

From muscle thrillers to family thrillers

But this high-energy suburban thriller isn’t just about surprising you. The series plays with clichés, or runs wild with them, but more often than not twists them (witness the surprising but welcome opening scene of the first episode) and takes the characters to interesting places to develop into family drama and “brotherhood”.

The main characters are constantly developing, with a trajectory that we sometimes find quite easy, but we do not leave our pleasure amid the fascinating progression of twists and stakes that we feel are getting higher and higher. .

Because we can well imagine that Ourika is not meant to last just one season and that these first seven episodes are just the beginning of a huge police and family mural that should take us beyond the Paris region and the Ourika Valley, which remains central. The cradle of the Jebel family.

With its main characters, who have everything to become iconic, and its colorful supporting characters, including Bubba, who manages to bring some gravity with his charismatic presence without being too much. After a first season that does a good job of placing its pawns on a large-scale political-social chessboard, here’s hoping there will be a season 2 for the series to play new cards.

The Ourika series is available on Prime Video.