Reviews

So, yet another shabby detective with a complicated domestic life who brilliantly solves multiple murders on prime-time TV. We've been here before - and to be honest Marcella doesn't quite cut it up against the high quality of the competition.

I'll admit - I've a bit of a soft spot for Friel, and she has the star quality to have carried some slightly ropey scripts in the past, but she can't dominate here - there's just too much going on. Like the city it's set in, this show is frantic, with subplots and red herrings weaving in and out. But as with Agatha Christie or Dick Francis novels that leaves less time to get to know the characters, and attempts to make them "interesting" just get lost in the rush. In particular I suggest you watch (series 1) episodes 6-8 in a block because I didn't, and felt I rather lost track at that point.

Marcella isn't terrible, and is a pleasant enough watch if you've already seen most of the big-name modern detective shows, and/or you don't care for your murders to need subtitles. But at the same time it wouldn't be first on my list, and it probably only makes a 7/10 thanks to Friel.

I was a bit nervous about The A Word, I anticipated that the BBC would not pass up the chance to get preachy. Fortunately they (mostly) resisted that temptation - the autism's main role is to stir up an already complex web of family relationships, and The A Word follows the response to that perturbation in the same way as say Mike Leigh does (without getting that miserable). So the autistic son plays an oddly peripheral role, not least because he shuts us out as viewers as well as his parents; the core of the drama revolves around his parents trying to cope with him and trying to present a happy, "normal" facade. I'm no expert on how families cope with that sort of thing, but there seemed to be some truth in their response, even if you could quibble with the detail.

And it's just nice to have a "serious" drama these days that isn't trying to find a Nordic murderer...

I think they got the length just about right - I'm not sure I could have stuck with 26 episodes of the original Israeli version, but there was enough room for most of the subplots to "breathe" without outstaying their welcome. The exceptions were both on the business side - it felt like the original script had an interesting subplot about control of the brewery that was butchered until it barely made sense, and ditto about the development of the pub. Another half an hour would have cracked it - but both could be developed in a second series.

Oh, and I'd disagree that a microbrewery and a glorified burger van make you "rich". The brewery looked like it was around 15 barrels capacity, so one step up from a "starter" microbrewery, the kind you would have after a few years trading and perhaps some awards that got you recognition beyond the local area - that would describe Coniston brewery, which I assume is where it was filmed? But you don't get "rich" off that kind of setup. If they were rich, they wouldn't be converting a derelict barn in the middle of nowhere to turn into a pub, they'd be buying an existing pub (of which there are plenty for sale in the Lakes). It's true that the BBC "Waitrosed" their home life but in terms of income they're on a similar level to people with a burger van and a back street boozer in the inner city.

Perhaps the best bit of this is the premise, it's telling the story of WWI from an unfamiliar angle, certainly to British eyes. And there are some good moments, a great scene where they are being bombed at night, the chaos of a ward when a new batch of casualties come from the front, the hardships of trying to set up a new hospital in the early stages of the campaign, the VD class, the increasing responsibilities thrust on the nurses. Conversely there are some fails - there are still trees standing on the site of a recent battle, when they would have been shelled to splinters.

The main problem is that it comes across as very episodic - meet new soldier, talk, then he dies/falls in love - and as a result it just doesn't quite hang together as a story. I think the editing is probably the biggest problem, perhaps an extra episode or two could have given them the time to deal with the post-Gallipoli story in the same depth as the Dardanelles campaign, which would have helped. Obviously the script is a bit constrained by trying to stick to history, but they could have eg had more of the matron's story which was hinted at but not really developed. She wasn't as pretty as the nurses so gets less screen time, but perhaps would have been a better way of addressing some of the big themes. The main cast do an OK job but there's a bit too much "now look sad" that never quite convinces. Some of the supporting men put in good performances, particularly Brandon McClelland.

Overall it's OK, I almost gave up after the first 20 minutes but it was just about worth sticking with. But I'd prefer something like Our Girl if you're looking for a story of women in the military with a better narrative to hold it all together.

Glue is an 8-episode whodunnit set in the rural community of the Berkshire Downs in southern England. It concentrates on a group of friends aged ~19 who have discovered sex, drugs and rock n'roll but are only just working out the consequences.

Since some of the group are Roma, the series plays on themes of inclusion/exclusion between the Roma and the "gadjo" (non-Roma) community, and Roma who leave the travelling life to become gadjos. Themes of life and death are also explored through animals, one character works as a vet and two others at a racing stable. But really it's about the dark things that lie beneath a superficially lovely environment, and how things that have happened to families in the past mess things up for the present. In that respect it feels like someone's watched a lot of Stephen Poliakoff and has tried to create a canvas that goes in that direction whilst having rather more action. Unfortunately they're not that good.

A key requirement of a whodunnit is to leave you guessing, and the basic structure of Glue's plot works well in that respect - there's lots of red herrings to keep you on your toes. The cast do a great job too - you can imagine this is the sort of young ensemble piece that will spawn a number of stars of big-budget films in years to come. Charlotte Spencer steals it for me (but I'm a sucker for the ginger freckly look), I can see Callum Turner brooding as the romantic lead in a Hardy or Austen adaptation in 2020, and Jordan Stephens is surprisingly good, he's got a future in acting if the Rizzle Kicks thing doesn't work out. I find Yasmin Paige less compelling in the Miss Marple role as a trainee policewoman, I think it's partly her and partly a character which is trying to present several different faces to the world and ends up falling in the gaps between worlds. I know it's the intention for her to be adrift like that, but I think it needed a better actress to convey such complexity.

It's a shame that a good cast and good plot aren't quite enough to make a fully satisfying show. There's at least one stupid irritating goof in each episode - for instance you are only allowed to shoot pheasants in winter, but a shoot is depicted among bluebell flowers (ie May), and other scenes happen in a field that's close to harvest (July?) or at 8pm in daylight. Older viewers may be put off by the gratuitous yobbishness of the first two episodes - I'd urge such viewers to stick with it, that stuff largely disappears after Glue has shown how down with the kids it is and it becomes a lot more serious. It's fair to say that none of the characters are particularly likable, so if you're looking for heroes to cheer then this isn't really your thing.

And otherwise - it just doesn't quite come together, partly because all those red herrings make for quite a crowded cast list and you get a bit lost between them all (a few blond(e) wigs would have helped distinguish them) - but they have scope to be developed in a second series, the attempts at epic cinematography amount to a GoPro on a drone and the soundtrack is surprisingly sparse.

But I don't want to sound too down on Glue - overall it should satisfy anyone looking for a good whodunnit which tries to ask some questions about society and family, although it may help if you're young enough to have heard of Rizzle Kicks!

At heart, What Remains is an updated version of the country-house who-dunnit, a woman is murdered in a house that's been converted into 5 flats, and it's assumed that one of the other residents did it.

There's few tangible clues as to what happened so there's little for forensics to do - this is not CSI/Silent Witness. Instead the clues lie in the psychology and relationships of the residents - it's a bit Stephen Poliakoff in the way they're all prisoners of their pasts. So it explores the relationships of the suspects in a depth that you wouldn't normally see from Miss Marple.

Then on top of that you've got a few classic horror-movie buttons being pushed (not altogether successfully) and the hangdog detective working past his retirement date on just one last case. "You've all given up on finding the murderer, we owe it to this girl to find out what happened". It's a cliché because it works.

I can see why some people find the first half a bit slow, it's deliberately meant to be "static" and a bit claustrophobic with the vast majority of the action happening within the house. It maybe helped that I recorded it and watched the whole thing in one sitting, so didn't have a week to think about how little had apparently happened in any one episode.

On the other hand there's a few sub-plots in the middle that don't move the plot forward at all, they're just there so Giedroyc can expand his theme of loneliness in the city. It feels a bit self-indulgent when some of the residents' stories are left hanging at the end, either because he didn't know where to go or 20 minutes got left on the cutting room floor, it would be more satisfying if they had been resolved. I suppose it says something that you do care enough to want to know how things work out for them.

So this is not a show for people looking for car chases and shootouts. Personally I preferred Jane Campion's Top of the Lake which the BBC aired in the same slot a few weeks before. But if you've run out of Scandinavian detective box-sets to watch then this is a decent enough way to spend an evening.

This is not a great film. It's certainly no Where Eagles Dare and it's not even a Puppet on a Chain. And if you were hoping for a Brosnan film in the style of Goldeneye or The Thomas Crown Affair, forget it. The cast deserve better, but if you ignore the star names and don't set your expectations too high, it's an OK TV action flick.

It wants to be a (low-budget) Bond movie with glamorous locations and a series of action sequences to make you forget a paper-thin plot, but there's no finesse to it, it's all a bit pedestrian. The dialogue creaks, the accents are all over the shop, and the direction uneven. There's several nods to Puppet on a Chain, with a lot of action set on the canals of Amsterdam, and I suspect that Brosnan had already been cast as Bond before filming the casino scene (Nightwatch came out a month before Goldeneye).

The main problem with the film is that it all hangs on the relationship between Brosnan and Paul, which has little chemistry and is badly developed. I've not read the book but it feels like a fairly minor female character has been expanded to accommodate Paul at the height of her Baywatch fame, when just following the original story was at the limits of the scriptwriter's capabilities - and writing decent dialogue was waaay beyond him.

Despite all that it rattles along at a reasonable pace, it's a passable way to spend 90 minutes if you don't expect too much of it.