SERIES REVIEW – The Sentinels drops the super-soldier myth straight into the hell of World War I, and it works largely because the show never winks at the audience. It adapts the 2009 French-Belgian graphic novel series of the same name, written by Xavier Dorison and illustrated by Enrique Breccia, published by Delcourt. Across eight episodes, its dark tone and visual ambition feel more confident than a lot of recent Marvel output, even if not every beat is unpredictable. We watched it thanks to CANAL+’s Hungarian streaming service.

It’s genuinely satisfying when a French production doesn’t just promise ambition, but actually pays for it and earns it on screen. Period reconstruction is a minefield: one too-clean set, one wrong texture, and the whole thing starts to look like cosplay with a budget. In theaters, you can point to the recent success of The Count of Monte Cristo, or to the momentum behind The Three Musketeers – Part I: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady. On the TV side, CANAL+ once again proves it knows when to spend, especially after Paris Police 1900 already showed how well this era fits the channel. The Sentinels is set during World War I, built on that 2009 comic run, and it’s also among the network’s first originals to launch in France and multiple other countries at the same time.

Captain America, French Style – More Mud, Less Posing

The comic already leans into cyborgs and human-boosting serums, but the series pushes harder into superhero territory, adding some pieces and reshaping others. That makes the connection to Captain America: The First Avenger hard to miss: Gabriel Ferraud is a French soldier pulled back from the brink by a miracle serum that then supercharges his body. He’s recruited into an elite unit tasked with turning the war around against an enemy that seems to have had the exact same idea.

Leaning more openly into the collision of trench warfare and superhero mythology isn’t a problem by itself, even if the show streamlines things and occasionally rewires the source material pretty aggressively. A letter-perfect adaptation wouldn’t add much anyway, and this version sparks in the right places. The eight roughly forty-minute episodes move at a clip – the kind where you look up and realize you’ve flown through half a season – and it rarely drifts. Yes, a few turns are easy to call, and the world could use another layer of depth, but as dark, tightly assembled entertainment, The Sentinels is difficult to pick apart.

If there’s one area where it lands immediate hits, it’s the visuals. The period work is convincing enough to sell this slightly alternate version of history, whether we’re on the front line or back in Paris, and the grounded steampunk costumes hit dead center. Some viewers may miss the bolder colors of the comic, because the series commits to a deliberately muddy brown-gray-yellow palette. But paired with strong directing, that choice reinforces the show’s harsh, no-mercy atmosphere. The Sentinels clearly draws from the recent wave of adult, realist-leaning superhero films – somewhere between The Batman and Logan – and it still makes room for character psychology in the middle of the action.

Serum, Mud, and Style – This Is How You Do Adult Superheroes

The fights – including the hand-to-hand – are shot with impact and clarity, and at times they echo Daredevil, especially in the opening credits, without turning everything into overcooked superhero spectacle. You may even find yourself wishing there were more confrontations, and that they went bigger. The directing work from Édouard Salier and especially Thierry Poiraud, who also oversees the show’s visual identity, deserves real credit. Some wide landscape compositions look like they were lifted directly from a comic panel. The effects and lighting also routinely deliver that clean, satisfying pop.

What keeps The Sentinels from feeling like an instant classic (for now) is a soundtrack that’s easy to forget, a handful of uneven performances, and a lead character who occasionally feels underwritten. More than once, the supporting cast ends up being more compelling than Gabriel, especially among the story’s relatively few female characters. It also helps that most of the cast aren’t overfamiliar faces, which lets the series breathe as its own world. And using German alongside French is exactly the right call for immersion – it quietly makes everything feel more grounded.

So Close to Great – Just Missing a Few Real Detours

Now it’s simply a matter of whether the show finds the audience it deserves, because there’s still plenty to explore in this universe. The four volumes of the source material already suggest room for a larger mythology, new threats, and even bolder techno-horror ideas. If a follow-up keeps leaning into the filth of the Great War and the super-soldier obsession with the same conviction, The Sentinels could easily become one of CANAL+’s signature titles. Either way, we’re ready to head back to the front – serum or no serum.

-Herpai Gergely „BadSector”-