Drama digest
Thai cave rescue or Tham Luang Cave rescue is a real-life story and incident that took place in Thailand. This series was produced by Netflix depicting the story of this real-life incident. In this series, we get to see the nuances of the mishap and how it affected the lives of people around it.
The Feel-good part
The most important aspect of the series was that it relied upon emotions rather than just the story and screenplay to convey the incident the series. All the child actors who play the football team have decent performances; unlike the immature performances we would typically expect from child actors. The entire series felt so real, as if it was happening right before our eyes. The production did a great job portraying all sorts of people involved in the incident.
The disappointing factor
Except for great acting performances from everyone, some actors acted a bit sloppily. Also, the lead actor (assistant coach) portrayed by the respected Beam Papangkorn passed away recently in real life, which makes the show even more disturbing and uncomfortable.
In-depth analysis
This incident occurred in June and July 2018 in the Tham Luang Nong Cave in northern Thailand. The district’s name was Chiang Rai. On 23rd June 2018, a local school football team consisting of twelve members aged 11-16 went for a short trip to the Tham Luang caves along with their 25-year-old assistant coach, Ekkaphon Chanthawong. It is said that the boys visited the caves to celebrate someone’s birthday and to relax and explore the caves. With no expectation of rainfall, the boys stayed there for a long time and partied. Not long after this, it began to rain. To shield themselves from the rain, the boys decided to take temporary shelter inside the cave. It started to rain heavier soon and the rain kept becoming heavy. It rained so much that it flooded the caves and the boys couldn’t escape it. Worried that their children hadn’t returned home, the parents contacted their head coach. The coach confirmed that the children had returned a long time ago along with their assistant coach. Because the boys were nowhere to be found, the head coach enquired about them to the other children of the school. Luckily, a 13-year-old teammate of the boys told the coach that they had gone to visit the Tham Luang caves after their match. Considering this, the head coach informed the police about this as soon as possible, and the police visited the site. Horrified by the extreme flood, the police invited the other rescue teams for help. As the boys weren’t found still, more rescue teams were invited. More than ten thousand people were involved in this rescue which consisted of 100 divers, nearly 1000 police officers, and 700 diving cylinders, etc. Later all the twelve kids along with the coach were safely rescued as they had held their ground on a rock that was four meters above the surface. A lot of lives were affected because of this incident and it still stays one of the most influential incidents for Thailand to date.
Star power
The creators of the show were the heroes of the show, but the most credit needs to be given to the real-life heroes who were involved in all this. A big salute to all those who risked their own lives to save the twelve victims.
Overall opinion
It’s an emotional and uplifting series that portrays a lot of hope, fear, despair, helplessness, selflessness, a sense of emergency, etc, only through its six episodes. Overall, it’s an excellent try to portray a major incident from history.
