Greek Salad: Amazon Prime series about youth in Athens

An impressive production with great frankness tells about the search for “themselves” by locals and foreigners living in the capital of Greece.

At the beginning of 2022, the news spread on Greek websites about a major French TV production Amazon Prime Video with a multinational cast, filming begins in Athens. The information was about a budget of 8 million euros for 8 episodes, which is about 1 million euros per episode. By comparison, the series will cost about the same as the “Maestro” by Christoforos Papakaliatis.

The news was “forgotten” until a few days ago on the platform, the premiere of the entire series “Greek Salad” (Salade Grecque) took place. The main action takes place in Athens. Great emphasis is placed on infrastructure reconstruction and urban renewal. Filming carefully shows every corner of the metropolis and the pastime of the townspeople.

The footage is different from the footage that viewers have seen in recent similar projects such as Netflix’s “Μπέκετ”. The routes and walks of the heroes of the series in such areas and nooks and crannies as Metaxourgio, Gazi, Acropolis, Neo Cosmos and Ardittu are carefully thought out.

Perhaps the most characteristic phrase that best describes what than we live downtown lately, uttered by one of the characters, a transsexual: “Athens is a city in transition.” This is a kind of pun, which, apparently, also refers to the change of the sex of the hero.

The story goes like this: A brother and sister in their 20s, raised in Paris and New York, separated between a divorced French father and a British mother, suddenly discover they have inherited a property in central Athens from their late grandfather.

Grandson Tom arrives in Athens from New York to accept the inheritance and oversee its sale. The guy discovers that on the top floor of a high-rise dilapidated building “settled” a group of young people of different backgrounds who have gathered in Athens for various reasons: study, work, or because now is just a “good time”.

At the same time, his sister Mia is already in Athens. She dropped out of college and works secretly from her parents for an NGO that helps refugees. The girl has a relationship with a young Greek anarchist. The couple, along with other members of the NGO, live in a commune that is periodically “covered by the police” and expelled from the building.

The scheme according to which the central axis of the scenario develops (in four, at least, the first series) is simple: two well-bred, by definition bourgeois children found themselves in the “exotic” urban environment of the metropolis, which is in the most marginal phase in recent decades. Young people are diligently trying to survive in this melting pot of historical and cultural influences, with their defining beliefs and ideologies, and constantly challenge society.

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