Faced with what is presented as a British-Irish psychological thriller, those investing their time in these three 60-minute episodes in the experienced hands of Director Alex ("Line of Duty") Holmes will most likely go in with a couple of possible expectations and with a view otherwise that almost anything vaguely criminal and troubling (but probably also quite familiar) might happen under the banner genre-description of "thriller".
And in my view that would be just the way to start off with "Paula" (as opposed to, say, spoling things by reading this review!) Certainly if you want to be shaken out of the above convictions...
For if you do approach the series in the above way, you're going to find yourself conforming with years of TV-watching experience by starting from the off to shape our titular chemistry-teaching character Paula (played very well by Denise Gough) into the typical hero of these kinds of series. By the end of episode 1 that will still look quite a reasonable proposition, and your conventional mind will still be working hard on a task that is actually an uphill "square peg" kind of struggle.
And by the end of episode three, you will realise that that mind of yours never really stood a chance because - while we can indeed appreciate Paula's suffering, troubles, loneliness and humdrum existence regularly punctuated by unpleasant things - we CANNOT sympathise with her as this is not a person(ality) that can ever evoke sympathy.
Unless you're a VERY resilient and flexible person, the convention-defying approach that denotes is going to leave you wrong-footed and a little breathless, and THAT is either an unnerving thing, or a sign of the education, treat and new "entertainment" experience that "Paula" has to offer.
If you're like me, you'll end up finding this mostly refreshing and even impressive.
If you're still casting around desperately for heroes (and let's face it we all do or want to do that), the closest you get is Owen McDonnell as detective "Mac", whom Irish viewers will apparently feel is sort of reprising his Garda role, while Brits and others may be none the wiser. "Mac" certainly suffers a bit, but is a bit incompetent and a bit unkind to the truly-nice bit-part partner of his who dotes on him. And when Paula does her usual thing of (briefly) wanting every man she comes across sexually, he by no means says no...
Tom Hughes as pretty boy/thug James Moorcroft (whom Paula has also bedded ... just the once) of course plays a monumental part here, but he is pretty much straightforwardly the bad-guy, even if he has his bad childhood and other unpleasant things to somewhat account for what he gets up to.
These are the main parts of significance here, and if you are getting the impression that all is a bit dour, glum and gloomy, well you'll be right. Soaring GDP as it may have, Ireland still has its pockets of squalor and poverty, and we see several of them here, even if Belfast mostly stands in for Dublin!
Psychological thrillers with gloomy settings are something many of us get a kick from, even if they are nothing new. But where Paula innnovates is with its plot of murderous "obvious" violent male psychopath meets ostensibly-normal but actually strange-as-anything female psychopath, and in this context Paula has the chance to see her psychopathy "blossom", in a revenge-related plot strand that may be quite hard for most viewers to take, and is certainly one of the most chillingly innovative since Edgar Allen Poe...
Grim, scary, perhaps shocking, "Paula" is mainly innovative in the above way, and does not have too much else to offer. But for me that is enough, and I believe the same may go for other potential viewers who are not too sensitive...
And in my view that would be just the way to start off with "Paula" (as opposed to, say, spoling things by reading this review!) Certainly if you want to be shaken out of the above convictions...
For if you do approach the series in the above way, you're going to find yourself conforming with years of TV-watching experience by starting from the off to shape our titular chemistry-teaching character Paula (played very well by Denise Gough) into the typical hero of these kinds of series. By the end of episode 1 that will still look quite a reasonable proposition, and your conventional mind will still be working hard on a task that is actually an uphill "square peg" kind of struggle.
And by the end of episode three, you will realise that that mind of yours never really stood a chance because - while we can indeed appreciate Paula's suffering, troubles, loneliness and humdrum existence regularly punctuated by unpleasant things - we CANNOT sympathise with her as this is not a person(ality) that can ever evoke sympathy.
Unless you're a VERY resilient and flexible person, the convention-defying approach that denotes is going to leave you wrong-footed and a little breathless, and THAT is either an unnerving thing, or a sign of the education, treat and new "entertainment" experience that "Paula" has to offer.
If you're like me, you'll end up finding this mostly refreshing and even impressive.
If you're still casting around desperately for heroes (and let's face it we all do or want to do that), the closest you get is Owen McDonnell as detective "Mac", whom Irish viewers will apparently feel is sort of reprising his Garda role, while Brits and others may be none the wiser. "Mac" certainly suffers a bit, but is a bit incompetent and a bit unkind to the truly-nice bit-part partner of his who dotes on him. And when Paula does her usual thing of (briefly) wanting every man she comes across sexually, he by no means says no...
Tom Hughes as pretty boy/thug James Moorcroft (whom Paula has also bedded ... just the once) of course plays a monumental part here, but he is pretty much straightforwardly the bad-guy, even if he has his bad childhood and other unpleasant things to somewhat account for what he gets up to.
These are the main parts of significance here, and if you are getting the impression that all is a bit dour, glum and gloomy, well you'll be right. Soaring GDP as it may have, Ireland still has its pockets of squalor and poverty, and we see several of them here, even if Belfast mostly stands in for Dublin!
Psychological thrillers with gloomy settings are something many of us get a kick from, even if they are nothing new. But where Paula innnovates is with its plot of murderous "obvious" violent male psychopath meets ostensibly-normal but actually strange-as-anything female psychopath, and in this context Paula has the chance to see her psychopathy "blossom", in a revenge-related plot strand that may be quite hard for most viewers to take, and is certainly one of the most chillingly innovative since Edgar Allen Poe...
Grim, scary, perhaps shocking, "Paula" is mainly innovative in the above way, and does not have too much else to offer. But for me that is enough, and I believe the same may go for other potential viewers who are not too sensitive...