Reviews

I barely made it through the first, excruciating episode. The series is ostensibly about a bunch of police trainees who, it is presumed, are supposed to learn from their senior handlers how to do the job in a very tense, violent area where cops are not liked, to follow their orders and to defer to them. Assaults on police seem pretty routine and common. The cops strip their identification from their uniforms before entering these dangerous neighborhoods. In such places in particular you would expect that the green rookies would defer to and rely on their senior officers, or handlers, more than ever. But in this completely non-credible series, quite the opposite is true. They almost routinely ignore or overrule their superiors and essentially do whatever they like. One officer orders a recruit out of a patrol car, but the recruit stares at her and says "no." End of confrontation. It' s not only not credible, it's really, really annoying! You want someone to shake these arrogant squirts or smack them pretty hard. Or maybe just kick them off the force as they are clearly never going to make it. Maybe later episodes changed this dynamic, but if this is the tone they set from the get-go, I'm out.

SPOILER ALERT

The series started off and carried on well up till the last episode, although it drifted before that from a search for a serial killer into a mix of horror film with threads dealing with homosexuality and abuse of women thrown in.

The plot follows a reporter's efforts to find the man who raped and murdered her mother, right in front of her, when she was 10 years old. Although the case went cold, she is convinced that the disappearance of a young woman is the work of the same killer. The stories she runs forces the police to step up their game. Before things end, two more young women are kidnapped by the same villain.

After nearly six hours of following the various threads in this yarn, audiences have a right to expect a definitive conclusion, but we are left largely flat and in the dark. Although the killer's identity is revealed (many will have guessed who it was anyway), we are not told if he is ever apprehended or tried for his crimes. None of his victims ever see him, nor does our star reporter, as he always wears a ski mask,. Although the two women are rescued, we never find out what happened to the first one who disappeared and ignited the investigation.

Other scenes stretch credulity to its limits, particularly when the reporter follows the killer on her own, tags along with police, and personally rescues three women completely on her own in the process.

When the final episode ends abruptly and the credits roll, many will turn it off, but if they do they will miss two brief scenes that were inserted in the middle of the credits. This was both bizarre and unfair.

The one-star rating is for the utter failure to bring a promising mini series to a satisfying conclusion and for showing disregard for the audience. When it was over, I was sorry I spent any time on this at all.

SPOILER ALERT!

I have enjoyed binging the Bergerac series, minus season 4, which is missing from Brit Box. I like John Nettles in this series and the very different Midsomer Murders, as well as the supporting casts in both series. For the most part, Bergerac is fast-paced and presents interesting plots and villains. However, a number of episodes left the audience hanging and did not come to complete conclusions. One episode ended with them learning that they'd arrested the wrong man, but we never found out who was the real villain? This episode was particularly annoying. It was not convincing why the protragonist even recruited Bergerac and, even after he succeeds in outdoing his would-be assassin, the episode ends with a police car pulling up, but no explanation of why they are there. This was an otherwise compelling episode, which made the enigmatic ending even more frustrating.

Season 2 ran out of steam at episode 3 with too many totally non-credible events. No one's that major or powerful criminal mastermind. How can they botch Christian's rescue so badly?? How can Mikki (or anyone) have tentacles that long and numerous to control so much and employ so many operatives? She's only a DCI, like Morse or Barnaby or any number of TV police officers. And how does she stay one step ahead all the time, such as having a hit man conveniently in place to bump off Marcus just as he is taking the deal over the phone? Then, to top it all off, a carefully orchestrated rescue of Christian fails to include any cover during and after tge airpirt getaway. Laughable.

Good plot & cast, as usual. Two separate murders are investigated, one involving a scamming of investors in an invention scheme, and a ring of rare bird egg thieves. Very interesting to watch Barnaby and Troy work through the clues. Only flaw is the two elderly women tolerating Anton Lesser's abuse. Why didn't they call the police? As usual , there is a separate thread in involving Tom & Joyce, while Troy pursues a new romantic interest by taking up bird watching. In addition to Lesser, the guest cast includes other familiar faces from the British TV mystery circuit, including David Calder and Rosalind Knight.

I am a big fan of Peter Sellers and enjoy most of his films, and I realize that this film is highly regarded for various reasons, but it was a total misfire for me.

The film is a one-joke work that wears thin very quickly. Just as quickly, it becomes less and less credible. It becomes not so much a matter of how obtuse the Sellers character is, but how totally credulous and unbelievable the rest of the characters are. Not for one minute did I believe any of their reactions to Sellers beyond the first few encounters.

It's too bad, really, because Sellers was an amazing talent; a totally plastic actor who could literally become any of the characters he played. I will continue to enjoy most of his other work, but I could never sit through this again. It was boring and, after a while, excruciating.