The dialogue; It just sort of doesn't work. Feels forced, not polished well, or something. Just doesn't flow naturally. Which makes the show harder to watch, with better dialogue it would be an 8 or 9 or so.
Which is too bad, because everything else I can say about the show is solid. The setup is that big city/major national reporter Eileen Fitzgerald, after writing a questionable story, gets fired from her paper and her career is dead. An old contact/friend/work partner offers her a job in Alaska, to help write a story about a dead, probably murdered Native American teenager that was not properly investigated. She agrees, and we see both the main story thread and the workings of this paper, which has seen better days, with lots of side stories about various goings on in Alaska.
I have heard about how Native American women go missing and dead at very high rates, but have no personal connection or special knowledge about this problem so won't comment further. For story purposes, it works something like a cold case or other detective show, and investigating a missing person properly is compelling. The side cases make for good stories also. It is funny how well connected the journalists are, a friend or family member is somehow connected to each major story.
The characters are meant to be regular people, the sort you might run into regularly rather than super competent types who always get things right. Eileen is a hard charging, hard driving personality that sometimes hard charges into boneheaded decisions and abrades against her colleagues, the other journalists are generally friendly but sometimes need some sharpening up, the two managers are fine, neither making genius or boneheaded decisions, doing about as well as expected. It's a different feel than, say, lots of detective shows, be ready for this when you watch.
So, good setup, good characters...but that darn dialogue.
Which is too bad, because everything else I can say about the show is solid. The setup is that big city/major national reporter Eileen Fitzgerald, after writing a questionable story, gets fired from her paper and her career is dead. An old contact/friend/work partner offers her a job in Alaska, to help write a story about a dead, probably murdered Native American teenager that was not properly investigated. She agrees, and we see both the main story thread and the workings of this paper, which has seen better days, with lots of side stories about various goings on in Alaska.
I have heard about how Native American women go missing and dead at very high rates, but have no personal connection or special knowledge about this problem so won't comment further. For story purposes, it works something like a cold case or other detective show, and investigating a missing person properly is compelling. The side cases make for good stories also. It is funny how well connected the journalists are, a friend or family member is somehow connected to each major story.
The characters are meant to be regular people, the sort you might run into regularly rather than super competent types who always get things right. Eileen is a hard charging, hard driving personality that sometimes hard charges into boneheaded decisions and abrades against her colleagues, the other journalists are generally friendly but sometimes need some sharpening up, the two managers are fine, neither making genius or boneheaded decisions, doing about as well as expected. It's a different feel than, say, lots of detective shows, be ready for this when you watch.
So, good setup, good characters...but that darn dialogue.
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