I really wanted to enjoy this series which appeared to have much promise. Although it had a few badly conceived issues in the early episodes, it was nonetheless engaging and pretty entertaining.
Sadly, I was soon disabused of these opinions as a consequence of the significant plot flaws and implausible situations. Whilst the overall acting performances were pretty good, this was undermined by outrageously dislikeable characters and too many unbelievable relationships, not to mention wholly incompetent cops. Mary's "holier than God" (albeit at a hefty charge!) despicable attitude, together with her ingratiating smile (smirk?), soon became a real turn-off.
In common with most extended series the desire to continue the programme for as long as possible resulted in contrived plots that increasingly detracted from the original premise. For sure, series one may have justified a review score of 8 or so, but by the end of series three things had transgressed well beyond the bands of believability such that I couldn't see past a score of 2 or 3. Hence my overall rating of 6/10.
I am the first to appreciate that entertainment quality sometimes needs to stretch the realms of reality but there has to be a balancing degree of plausibility. At the conclusion of this series the fact that Mary, Des and Ben had all avoided lengthy jail sentences epitomized the reality problems depicted by the programme.
Sadly, I was soon disabused of these opinions as a consequence of the significant plot flaws and implausible situations. Whilst the overall acting performances were pretty good, this was undermined by outrageously dislikeable characters and too many unbelievable relationships, not to mention wholly incompetent cops. Mary's "holier than God" (albeit at a hefty charge!) despicable attitude, together with her ingratiating smile (smirk?), soon became a real turn-off.
In common with most extended series the desire to continue the programme for as long as possible resulted in contrived plots that increasingly detracted from the original premise. For sure, series one may have justified a review score of 8 or so, but by the end of series three things had transgressed well beyond the bands of believability such that I couldn't see past a score of 2 or 3. Hence my overall rating of 6/10.
I am the first to appreciate that entertainment quality sometimes needs to stretch the realms of reality but there has to be a balancing degree of plausibility. At the conclusion of this series the fact that Mary, Des and Ben had all avoided lengthy jail sentences epitomized the reality problems depicted by the programme.