User Reviews

It's the second last show of the entire series, and we find Inspector Thomas Lynley turning to booze to cope with the death of his wife, Helen. He has to pull out of it soon enough, though.

"Limbo" actually begins 12 years earlier, when Lynley's young godson goes missing during a party and is never seen again. Shift to the present, and the boy's skeleton is found in a drain that has been covered with bricks. The family asks Lynley to go to Italy and see if he can encourage the boy's sister to return. Lynley ends up having sex with her, and the next morning, he is arrested for her murder when she's found dead on the pavement below.

DC Michelle Tate (Geraldine Summerville) is looking only at Lynley for the murder, doubly suspicious of him because he's a detective. So it falls to him and to Havers to solve the murder - fast.

This is a pretty good episode with plenty of suspects and intrigue. There are a couple of plot holes, but thanks to the actors, it still works. Geraldine Summerville is very good as a no-nonsense DC who thinks Lynley looks good for the murder. Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small are wonderful as she tries to goad him out of his misery.

Recommended.

Naturally Tommy is still suffering massively after Helen's demise, but he is called upon when a twelve year old case, the disappearance of his godson, is reopened.

It's a real shame that the show comes to an end after just one more episode, I've always thought the show developed very well with time, I never thought it dipped, and although Limbo isn't a classic, it's still a very good watch.

It's a good, solid story, and considering the case is so emotive, it doesn't offer a real level of intensity, the good definitely outweighs the bad, but it could have been better.

I'll start with the positives, the acting and production values are spot on, Samantha Bond and Nicholas Farrell are both terrific, you feel their anguish and pain.

It looks great, I personal think the scenes in Italy look amazing, but were they necessary? I did chuckle when the setting suddenly switched from Italy to London, it didn't exactly flow well.

I love Geraldine Somerville, I'm not sure I was a big fan of her character, maybe she overdid the nasty cop in charge thing a little bit.

On the whole I enjoyed it, I just don't want it to end yet, 7/10.

A young boy is missing during his birthday party. Lynley is in this episode, he is off on compassionate leave because he saw his wife killed in the previous episode and has become an alcoholic.

12 years later the young boy Justin's body is found. Family members are suspected. As in all these episodes there are many suspects like a man that has cancer and a baby sitter, The boy comes from a well to do family that lives in a big house.

This story is horrible, a skeleton of a young body is found, a dead woman who they think committed suicide and a woman's body in the woods all bloody. It shows how when people think they are doing good make bad decisions and sometimes leads to the death of someone else.

The story and conclusions are too dragged out though interesting. It is not like Agatha Christie where everyone that is a suspect ends up in the same room and then the murderer and events are brought to light. I am drained by the time the episode is over.

In this series Lynley and Havers are constantly traveling, chasing suspects, going to different houses together or separate. The thing I do not understand it that they don't carry a gun. They only have handcuffs and when they corner a person that they just chased up and down stairs, in and out of buildings they tell the person to stand against the wall with their hands up so they can frisk them and handcuff them. Picture this - Havers a female Detective Sergeant, confronting a male murderer. The criminal puts up his hands while she tries to see if he has a weapon and he hits her. He knows they don't carry guns.

They used the word "Christ" in this episode 3 times like a swearing word and that bothers me. It was not like this in other episodes. There were previous episodes one was "The Word of God" and "In the Blink of an Eye" where the writers and actors showed respect for Muslims and sympathy. Where is the respect for Christianity? Writers are not respectful when it comes to religions like Christianity and the Jewish religion. I don't think any religion should be attacked and I don't think any religion should be preferred or story line shown biased in the stories.

Anyway there is a lot of action and different type stories in the BBC mysteries.

I tend to like mysteries on PBS. They usually have a good representation of characters, some depth, some engaging investigation, and some "mystery". However, this particular episode of Lynley was not my favorite. First of all, the movie centered around the death of a young boy, which to begin with made the story more distressing than the usual. So in the first scenes we're first introduced to a lively child playing around and then the remains of a child's body,which was an uneasy start of a movie for me. The whole storyline as a result was far from uplifting and at the end, I did not have much of a sense of resolution even though the case was solved. There is a twist at the end but you kind of expected to see something along those lines coming, so it was not entirely surprising. As for acting, there were some scenes where Lynley and Havers had their good chemistry as a team but at times, the chemistry was entirely absent. Overall, I'd summarize that the movie was not bad, but it was not as good as I was hoping.

Lynley is drinking heavily after his wifes demise! 12 years earlier hes at a party for his godson, who disappears. With a body of the right size being found 12years later. All the suspects are "names" Thomas Lynley, A Lawyer, A police officer etc. Oddly, some of these folk later end up as "not so nice people" in similar roles in New Tricks yet in this their parts are no different. Lynley, isnt thinking straight, gets arrested more than once for more than one murder but he eventually works it all out to win the day. Early police cover up! Is a main part of this story and it gets better when the real culprit is revealled-no one in "high society" that you can actually trust!

What an absolutely appalling episode! Not only was the plot poorly put together and full of holes but the character development was terrible. Lynley continues his descent into Most Irritating Detective, whose way of coping with his wife's death is handled in the most trite of ways - if it is actually handled at all. Havers was disappointing, too, seemingly taking a backseat and running around after Lynley like an obedient puppy in the way that's just not plausible.

Only Parker and Small's acting made it bearable: when they actually had something to act with (such as during Lynley's interrogation by the DSI), they were wonderful.

I blame Elizabeth George in part - she's the one who keeps the characters in Limbo while her novels catch up with the fast pace of production. I wish she'd let them go and do their own thing.

Very cheesy Italian scenes. How a primary school teacher is going to live in a large apartment in the centre of Rome... How do they know the thief is Italian.etc etc etc and somehow they get back to London super fast.

I hope the rest of this final season is not THIS bad.

Oh, and speaking of bad: this is one of those forums that requires quantity, quality being incidental I guess.

Let's see: 426, oops 421, oh, I mean 399 ... I think the Lynley series has always been a bit shaky, and the series is generally too schmalzy for my taste, but nonetheless somehow compelling.

I never read the books, so I don't know if it is inherent in the novels or something that was done as part of the production.

I don't know what happened in this episode, but I almost stopped several times. It is an embarrassment and I imagine all involved must have felt the same.

I've seen many episodes where Lynley was a proper gentleman, but in this episode (7.1) he fornicates with a woman he has long known.

Sadly, that's another series which having enjoyed for some time, has now gone down the pits. I don't know why good stories get so spoilt.