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Reviews
Red Eye (2024)
Appalling!
There's literally nothing to recommend this drivel. Poor Richard Armitage looks like he's just doing this to pass the time. The story is utterly unbelievable blithering rot with the characters thoroughly disliked from the get-go. The only character who seems to be at all endowed with any intelligence is Armitage's. The rest are like empty-headed morons with no common sense at all. International law requires an aeroplane with a sudden suspicious death to divert to the nearest airport in case it is the result of a virus or misadventure so that a proper investigation can be carried out or quarantine protocols can be put in place to ensure it doesn't spread. Absolute tosh from start to finish! Don't waste your time.
After the Flood (2024)
Utter rot!
Having watched many shows like this, it galls me that the lead character is such an unlikable person. The whole story is utter rot, because no copper worth their salt due to take their CID exams would jeopardise their career by flagrantly ignoring procedures and go off half-cocked in such a way. The whole story is filled with more holes than a rusty colander, with the lead character putting a whole bunch of others in danger of losing their jobs. This poor and convoluted story is also a vehicle for the environmental movement, which I get as parts of the U. K. have suffered badly through poor flood defences, but this is supposed to be a murder investigation. If this was a story solely about tragic environmental disasters and how people overcome it, then fine, but to be honest the weak murder plot is only padded by pointless side stories.
Vera (2011)
Appallingly unlikable lead character
Vera? Poison pixie more like! An utterly obnoxious character, who I had hoped would get better but got progressively and increasingly erasable, unpleasant and without doubt a sure fire example of a boss who would be faced with a raft of complaints from colleagues and likely suspension leading to early retirement. Either that or the DSU would be drowning in transfer applications. I usually like dramas based on Anne Cleese's books but not this one. I couldn't warm to more than a couple of the cast and found myself wondering when they would be put forward for canonisation for putting up with Vera's truly appalling behaviour. People have said it gets better, I disagree, but please do give it a try, as whilst it didn't appeal to me, it does to others.
A Confession (2019)
Excellent adaptation
Without a single doubt the cast led by Martin Freeman, who plays Steve Fulcher excellently, pulled off a superb performance, illustrating the families pain and loss of the two known victims of Christopher Halliwell, who Joe Absolom deserves huge praise for playing perfectly the true sneering deviant monster that Halliwell is. The heartbreaking performance by Imelda Staunton and Siobhan Finneran as the grieving mothers was accurate to the point of being almost too realistic, a stark reminder that this is a tragic and horrific true story of lives cut short by a heartless killer. This true story plots how DSU Steve Fulcher, an experienced and highly professional copper, a real asset to Wiltshire Police, led the team that took down Halliwell. Sad to say, in comparison to the Novichok incident in Salisbury, the Wiltshire police failed their best horrifically after Steve Fulcher correctly allowed Halliwell to lead him to the dump site of tragic Sian O'Callaghan and his rational decision to allow Halliwell to point him to a second victim, Becky Godden-Edwards. Senior Wiltshire police literally disavowed one of the best detectives that has worked in the county, turning their back upon him, using him as a fall guy for their ineptitude rather than rationalising the complaint by tragic Becky's father to understand that he was attacking the wrong person. The actual monumental idiocy of the judge in the first trial almost beggars belief for disallowing Halliwell's confession under the PACE Act when it was, without doubt a live and in the moment volunteered offer by Halliwell, a man who would be vastly improved by his early demise. Fulcher and his deputy former DSU Sean Memory both were, and remain convinced that Halliwell had at least seven perhaps as many as nine victims, but Wiltshire Police in their colossal ineptitude, refuse to investigate it. In all, a highly creditable depiction of loss, good honest police work that was overshadowed by the rank idiocy of senior police and idiot politicians, Theresa May particularly. There are a couple of reasons it lost a star, nothing to do with the acting, but the camera work was, on occasions not as good as it should be. Well worth watching.
Shetland: Episode #8.2 (2023)
Missing an essential ingredient
Lost me as a viewer when they brought in the new DI. A good solid actress, Ashley Jensen's character Calder seems to dislike the role of Inspector, the island, the people and pretty much everything else. A hothead, who argues about everything or rubs everyone up the wrong way. I suspect the writers were trying for a sharp contrast to the quiet diligent efficiency of Douglas Henshall's character, Jimmy Perez and the easygoing camaraderie between Perez and Tosh, but it seems discordant like two melodies being played at the same time. Calder is too adversarial, too abrasive, leaving Tosh to smooth things over, in the same way she didn't need to do with Perez. The rest of the cast are still as fascinating and colourful as before with Billy and Sandy still being played excellently by Lewis Howden and Steven Robertson and of course, Alison O'Donnell delivers her part perfectly.
The plots per episode are okay, but the fit for me just isn't right.
Silent Witness: True Love Waits: Part 2 (2013)
Absolute rot
The perp is shot in the chest three times at close range with a nine millimetre semi automatic pistol, yet a second later he gets up and overpowers the former detective who shot him. The fact is that a vest will stop the forward motion of the bullet, but the energy from the sudden cessation of velocity of the solid is transmitted as kinetic energy into the torso, the result of which, even with a 9mm from less than two metres, he would have suffered at the least, broken ribs, possibly a punctured lung and organ trauma. At the end, the perp gets hit with a conveniently placed crowbar, which will, even with a slighter built person such as Emilia Fox, stove in a human skull like an eggshell. It often annoys me when people get hit in tv shows, they shrug it off like it was nothing. Granted, in actual real life the person throwing the punch most likely doesn't have a clue how to properly throw a punch, but the character that hit the perp is a cage fighter, he's going to know how to hit and hit extremely hard, meaning a man who should have internal bleeding, broken ribs still managed to bounce back, stab the seasoned fighter and nearly kill him until the Dr Alexander character brained him with a crowbar. Good grief!
Citadel (2023)
Utter garbage
Since when are humans immune to being punched repeatedly in the face, have their frontal bone, zygomatic arch and the sphenoid area bounced off of a stainless steel sink, a mirror and reinforced glass window, get kicked in the diaphragm (three times) then still get up and fight on and that's in the first ten minutes. Add to that bullets are flying around within the next ten minutes that hit the baddies (who have appalling aim - of course . . .) but miss the two heroes apart from one bullet, right at the end. Of course they're the only ones to survive a grenade that's more like a five kilo demolition charge whilst falling twenty metres into the water. Move forward and during a fight sequence, one of the baddies is stabbed down through the trapezoid region with a fifteen centimetre blade (under which is the lung) but he doesn't even bleed! He continues to fight as though he had a scratch from a splinter instead of slowly collapsing as his lung fills with blood . . . And he dies! Of course Richard Madden's character forgets who be is and when he gets the chance to find out, he fluffs it. Not that the identity recovery is particularly believable as the female lead injects herself and seconds later, she Miss super spy again d'oh! I don't mind a bit of spoof spy drama but at least try to make it believable. Watch it if you like, but I listened to music whilst it was on.
Wilderness (2023)
Too long boring as hell
The plot was thin, the acting wooden, the entire thing could have been completed in an hour special. It was so predictable it was boring. Even the cast certainly couldn't carry this nonsense. It was just a constant litany of f-bombs sloppily filmed sexual content and so full of plot holes it was like a poorly made sieve! It was truly a terrible waste of time that I stopped watching after the second episode, preferring to watch Discovery. I cannot comprehend why such a poorly written pile of garbage ever got onto television. I haven't read the book and after seeing this, I have no intention of doing so.
The Last Airbender (2010)
Appalling
So much worse than I remembered from the first time. This is the most horrific travesty of a live interpretation taken from a truly unique story idea. The idiot who wrote the script and directed it should never have been allowed within a hundred miles of this iconic show. Why change it so much? Horrible, just truly horrible!
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
A well made prequel
Ewan McGregor puts in a strong performance, leading a cast of superb actors. Hayden Christensen has the ideal presence of Vader and the gradual development of the story that illustrates that everything we thought that we knew about Obi Wan and Anakin was not complete, this fills in gaps. If I had a complaint, it was that it wasn't long enough. I loved it, but then I am a Star Wars fan . . .
Superman & Lois (2021)
Dreadful
This is a poor version of the great days of DC comics. I watched season one, four into season two, I started listening to music whilst the wife watched it. It was a completely idiotic misinterpretation of the bizarro stories.
Ten Percent (2022)
Quite simply dreadful
I don't mind a bit of cussing but the number of f-bombs in in less than ten minutes had me reaching for the remote. Thoroughly pointless drivel about luvvies that kind of made my stomach turn. Off of my watch list!
Stay Close (2021)
Unbelievable and not in a good way
This started quite well, the cast putting in a solid performance, but the inclusion of the 'dancing killers' was the biggest piece of blithering idiocy I've ever seen. It might conceivably work in an American setting where the book is based but categorically not in Britain. If you can suspend your disbelief at this convoluted pile of rot fine, but I stopped watching at episode six. Terrible!