Vapid, Marvel nonsense, without even the CGI magic to hold my attention.

"The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" doesn't have the acting talent up front to keep it afloat (don't get me started on Mackie/Stan), so when it degenerates into the recycled trope of 'resistance-group-who-aren't-bad-or-good' I really lost all enthusiasm.

The opening episode sets the tone: cheesy fights between grunts and superheroes, interweaved with dialogue that is neither snappy nor engaging. For some reason, Marvel also thought it'd be worth their time to try and include some 'human' issues (not being able to pay rent etc.), which come off as patronising more than anything.

The acting is rotten from the top down: besides the cringeworthy conflict of the two leads, characters like Zemo (Daniel Brühl) and Karli (Erin Kellyman) are prisoners to their restrictive scripting and personal range. I felt a bit for Wyatt Russell (the 'new' Captain America), as he wasn't entirely awful.

The most laughable moment, I would argue, was Disney trying to devote some time in the show to understanding racism. Aside from one out-of-sync police scene early on, it's insultingly ironic that a company pumping films out of China wants to paint themselves as forward-thinking and facilitators of positive change.

I persevered to the end, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. Without a doubt this is one of Marvel's weaker efforts: a boring plot is par for the course, but in conjunction with the brutal acting and the laughable villains, this shouldn't have been green-lit to begin with.

Even the Marvel shills have come to their senses, and this show has dropped below an 8 on IMDb; even so, it should really be less than half that.