A very modern and stylised BBC thriller starring Christopher Eccleston as a corrupt councilman, prone to alcoholic blackouts which eventually see him have a torrid affair with a married woman he's picked up in a bar and frenziedly kill the businessman who's bought his favours in awarding important contracts.
I like Eccleston in most things he does, but even he can't pull this morass together, in a plot full of unlikely and improbable links and coincidences. For one one thing his character is torn between three women, his long suffering wife included (Dervla Kirwan) and also turns to another, a fairy godmother nurse who just happens to be a recovering alcoholic herself, dispensing wisdom to both him and, unbelievably, his young son who's also lately started to show anti-social tendencies of his own. Incredibly, one of the other women he gets involved with is the daughter of the man he killed and to top it all, the husband of the third one, the married woman who somehow seems to fall for Eccleston when he's at his drunkest, turns out to be the jealously obsessive type and also the detective who puts himself on the line to help Eccleston out of the mess he's in.
Wrap around this a further sub-plot on council corruption, with the main insider in favour of the big bad private corporation going out with and making pregnant Eccleston's lawyer sister and I think you'll see that there was more than a little going on in the narrative department. I found it an absolute mess which no amount of flashy camera angles and pounding background music could make appealing or even in the slightest degree even close to credible. The "accidental hero" plot device was as unconvincing as any other part of this oversensationalised nonsense.
Eccleston and Kirwan are okay in their over and underwritten parts respectively while Andrew Scott (so good as Moriarty in "Sherlock") does the best he can as the agonised detective.
As I watch this, I'm also halfway through watching another BBC thriller mini-series "Line Of Duty", every minute of which has kept me on the edge of my seat. This lame, clumsy effort however gave me a problem hanging on to the edge of my reason.
I like Eccleston in most things he does, but even he can't pull this morass together, in a plot full of unlikely and improbable links and coincidences. For one one thing his character is torn between three women, his long suffering wife included (Dervla Kirwan) and also turns to another, a fairy godmother nurse who just happens to be a recovering alcoholic herself, dispensing wisdom to both him and, unbelievably, his young son who's also lately started to show anti-social tendencies of his own. Incredibly, one of the other women he gets involved with is the daughter of the man he killed and to top it all, the husband of the third one, the married woman who somehow seems to fall for Eccleston when he's at his drunkest, turns out to be the jealously obsessive type and also the detective who puts himself on the line to help Eccleston out of the mess he's in.
Wrap around this a further sub-plot on council corruption, with the main insider in favour of the big bad private corporation going out with and making pregnant Eccleston's lawyer sister and I think you'll see that there was more than a little going on in the narrative department. I found it an absolute mess which no amount of flashy camera angles and pounding background music could make appealing or even in the slightest degree even close to credible. The "accidental hero" plot device was as unconvincing as any other part of this oversensationalised nonsense.
Eccleston and Kirwan are okay in their over and underwritten parts respectively while Andrew Scott (so good as Moriarty in "Sherlock") does the best he can as the agonised detective.
As I watch this, I'm also halfway through watching another BBC thriller mini-series "Line Of Duty", every minute of which has kept me on the edge of my seat. This lame, clumsy effort however gave me a problem hanging on to the edge of my reason.