dartmouth-39013 Reviews

Cold Feet (1997–2020)

What a waste of good actors

[2/10 · 18 August 2023]

I have managed to get into the 4th episode of series one and just don't care anymore about any of these stupid 2-dimensional characters.

Are we meant to identify with the hopelessly muddled, insensitive and misinformed situations of these people?

Their endless difficulties with bad sex?

I'm not even sure of what genre this applies to: soap opera? Dark comedy? Patchy docudrama?

There are no apparent narrative threads outside of a sad preoccupation with awful sex.

I haven't so much as smiled through 3.5 episodes.

It is certainly not illuminated or informative.

The lines are delivered well and enjoyably by competent actors. What a waste!

I feel slightly alienated from my fellow humans on reading the glowing reviews here.

Good actors wasting their time churning out unmitigated pointless drivel.

I see that there are nine seasons - 8 to come!

I would have to be tied to a chair!

Awful stuff.

DCI Banks (2010–2016)

You know that a TV series is going to be awful when ....

[1/10 · 6 March 2023]

...half way through the first episode no woman over 35 without a perfect body shape has been seen and no man under 35 with one has appeared.

Yes please feature plain and ageing men. This is life like. But where were they keeping the old girls when they made this?

The reviews tell me that this irritating charmless characterless inept rude and ageing DCI is going to share sexual tension with the 35 year old he is partnered with. Oh please!!

I'm not sure that I will make it to the end of the first episode . A pity because I like a detective/police series.

I have just binged on Broadchurch, Grace, Macdonald and Dodds etc plus the sublime Happy Valley which contained a range of human beings of all ages giving an excellent sense of verisimilitude.

So I'm not being fussy about the genre

There is something just 'wrong' about this series starting with this lead character who bellows at vulnerable people then looks confused and weepy when they predictably break down and fail to offer anything useful. His stupefied ineptitude is just frustrating to watch. And his brutal rudeness for example to a surgeon on duty. Then he gazes about, confused as everything goes wrong.

Even allowing for the passage of 12 years this is an unsatisfactory and outdated perception of a 'good guy'. I remember older men carrying on with that attitude in drama and real life...back in the 70s! Even then it had to be a Clint Eastwood to pull it off!!!

Sherwood (II) (2022– )

EE bah 'eck Look at us Northerners

[2/10 · 14 July 2022]

I have tried to find out where the directors of this come from themselves. Their portrayal of 'Northern people' is squirmingly embarrassing.

It is awkward and agonising to see good actors forced into portraying this clodhopping public schoolboy fantasy stereotype of 'T' North.' This so often propagated by the BBC notably radio 4 where so often the insensitive and uncomprehending are portrayed eg with a heavy Lancashire accent.

The cast here is very good, my reason for tuning into this production, and my feeling being that they were just not allowed to do their job realistically!

The pace was kept deadly slow. All actors grimacing, glaring and confrontational.

"EEh let's sho'em some reel life up here." And we're not even in T' north...at East Midlands!

Ex miners are exclusively humourless, slow witted and aggressive? Not where I lived !

"Some men have come from 'up North' " It is announced to everyone's shock and horror. A quick dip into Game of Thrones perhaps?

No wonder we still have a ridiculous North/South divide with the regular propagation of such clog clad 'grim' fairy tales.

Most 'northern' (also East Midland) people are light on their feet with a wicked sense of humour. Yes they are generally initially friendlier than many southern communities (so unlike the barmaid portrayed here) but this does not make them uniformly stupid ! It could be said that we tend to be cosmopolitan and self reflexive every bit as much as anyone anywhere else.

This in complete contrast with the unrealistic po faced animosity marked as stereotypical in this peculiar go nowhere drama.

BBC please stop propagating these silly and divisive stereotypes of 'thick' humourless and endlessly aggressive 'Northern' people. It is childish and prevents actors from being the professionals that they are.

The result was like a very bad Am Dram attempt to ...do what?

And the narrative was a total waste of time, fractured, unrealistic and making no clear point.

Kate & Leopold (2001)

Stands the test of time

[8/10 · 26 May 2022]

It's a film you can watch more than once if you can swallow the crazy time travel aspect. Fortunately I can. It is witty and gently amusing and Hugh Jackman is a brilliant performer. I like Meg Ryan and she is best in films which allow for/capitalise on her limitations. Her character is charming, capricious, stuck in her ways and moderately funny. Breklin Meyer also plays very well as her annoying brother.

The comedy is well played.

It is an actual Rom-Com ...not straight up Rom-Rom as many disappointingly are.

I love romance when it is out there an unafraid like this.

Pure fantasy which also does not cloy.

The Sinner (2017–2021)

Mostly great but not series 4

[7/10 · 28 January 2022]

I have loved this series. Until the 4th which to me was low budget and turgid. Often over acted and stilted. Flimsy plot.

So enjoyed1, 2 and 3 though.

45 Years (2015)

Quietly beautiful

[9/10 · 20 January 2022]

A seemingly tranquil film with a deep and ugly undertone which develops as the film progresses.

Lovely performances all.

A great portrayal of a long standing relationship and of love in old age.

With hindsight the direction is brilliantly deceptive since the subplot to their relationship is fraught with possibilities.

No children are mentioned, but when Kate quietly raids the attic and examines photographs of her husband's old flame the woman is clearly pregnant. Then in a later shot at the same place her abdomen looks normal. What was in the letter he got which he won't talk about 50 years later? Yet she finds that he is secretly desperate to get to Switzerland to see is ex love's frozen body . Is that the only motivation? Does Geoff perhaps have a grown up child there?

In a chance remark early on there is an implication that he did not want children. No wonder Kate seems mysteriously emotional and jealous.

Beneath this leisurely narrative, the possible turmoil and its ramifications are quite disturbing and their effects are brilliantly portrayed by Rampling and Courntney.

Collateral (2018)

An excellent short series

[9/10 · 19 January 2022]

I was struck by the quality of this production. An absorbing and interesting narrative, very good acting, lovely camera work.

I found the story intriguing and neither confusing nor 'overloaded'.

I was puzzled at the acrid comments on this piece until another reviewer pointed out the polarised view point of many contributors

For example I am stunned in these informed times that people would take enough exception to the completely chaste portrayal of a lesbian to take the time to write to imdb about it. And female vicars are common enough nowadays, aren't they?

As I write it becomes clearer just how much people are outraged about. To my despair frankly.

The elements of this film are not 'issues raised' anymore, just fragments of public and private life quite expertly woven together.

I thoroughly enjoyed this work.

After Life: Episode #2.6 (2020) Season 2, Episode 6

A puzzling piece which fails to intrigue.

[3/10 · 14 January 2022]

So many amazing reviews here. I'd love to join in since I have really enjoyed the work of Ricky Gervais in the past.

Sorry but for me he's got totally lost in himself here. A good artist will walk a tightrope for sure.

This show has been going steadily off from a promising start imho.

I pushed through the second series and thought he would find himself in the third.

The impression with all of the glowing testimonials here is that this work evokes an amazing and original world which illustrates humanity in all of its colours moods and paradoxes comedy and tragedy.

I find it artless, childishly obscene and amateurishly nihilistic. The characterisations are public school boyish, horribly short sighed and patronising. Probably an attempt at some kind of satirical ellipse but it fails in its deliberate ineptitude.

Each characterisation is savagely cruel which might have a purpose if they held even a trace of humanising verisimilitude, but the actual life essence has been sucked out of every one of them in advance so that they may be used repetitively in 2 dimensional form thus doomed to make the same point incessantly.

And obscenity does not become funnier or more informative by compounding it and stacking it with intimate squirting dripping detail as with the double act in the office of the two masturbating colleagues. Viciously sickening and degrading to performer and recipient.

I have no sympathy for this angry bereaved man. He's an irredeemably horrible person with the odd weirdly placed rush of unrealistic benevolence.

I was moderately ok with Riky Gervais roasting over privileged film stars but he can keep his caricature of hard working humanity to himself for my money. 'Oh he's vomiting on the squash court ...his BIL is having a heart attack and he's gone all pink and benevolent for a moment ah he's being all kind for a second.' I get what he's doing. Half admire the experiment but no ... Ugly stuff.

However, having enjoyed his work in the past I am glad for him that so many others find enjoyment in this savage little world and its patronising preoccupation with sad stupidity degraded sex.

Switching off now.

Love, Weddings & Other Disasters (2020)

Dire

[2/10 · 13 January 2022]

Everyone in this film seems to be embarrassed.

It is just horribly inept and ...just bad.

Why does Diane Keaton move weirdly and use a false voice because her character is blind, and is she wearing a bad wig.

Why is the band featured in the film just awful to the point that the wildly enthusiastic audience adds an element of the grotesque?

Jeremy Irons seems slightly embarrassed in trying not to over play his cliched and unreal character.

Every role is cliched and unreal. And therefore impossible to represent with dignity to give the actors their due.

To make sure that there is no break in the torture events are 'linked' together by a really mediocre couple of folk singers. Don't tell me they are very famous and this doomed project has managed to destroy them too!

It is boring embarrassing film badly written, fragmented and unfunny wasting precious time for viewers and the quite respectable cast involved.

The Constant Gardener (2005)

Slow paced and watery plot

[6/10 · 3 January 2022]

I'm stunned to look back at the glowing contemporary reviews here. I tried to watch it all those years ago and became as bored and exasperated then as I have just become again. I dont agree with reviews hete of Weisz's acting. I find her character dull, flat and monotonously petulant.

Fiennes is simply acting out a well worn gentle caricature of the upper middle class gentlemen. She ex public school having a jolly good go at life. 'I am nothing without my work' she swoops dramatically not having made it entirely clear just what that is. No wonder Fiennes is consistantly gently bemused.

Somerset Maugham meets John Pilger: an uncomfortable and pedanticly obscure mix.

The 'I'm looking at the exploitation of Africa' vibe is very self conscious and more than slightly patronising. I didnt need to see Africans dancing singing to feel a connection. It worked well in Zulu but hopefully audiences have progressed since then, and it just felt corny and 'othering'.

The rift between black and white perpetuated in this film by the entrenched colonialism of the central characters was to me at odds with the time of the production and the very modern setting in which the dreary couple first meet, she opening up with a trite public schoolgirl rant which empties the room.

I would love to see a drama exploring the terrible behaviour of drugs companies towards struggling communities without a superimposed romantic white narrative to sugar the "pill." Patronising stuff!

I seem however to be at odds with my community in having loved neither The English Patient, nor more recently 'The Dig'. Both these and 'The Constant Gardener' wallow in a filmic form of groomed Britishness which exists solely in the imaginations of wishful thinking audiences and which bores me to tears in its dreary absence of verisimilitude.

Frontier (2016–2018)

Mindlessly boringly horribly violent

[2/10 · 20 December 2021]

Some lovely shots of North Eastern Canada. Beautiful old ships. An interesting base for a plot in a colourful and savage period of history.

I do not understand why a viewing public anywhere would have such an appetite for the unrealistic representation of such mindless brutality as this series contains. It directly accounts for the puzzled response of contemporary teenage killers who say with surprise "I didn't think it would kill him" Terrible beatings are laboriously portrayed in this work with bone crunching sound effects. One or two of the bone shattering blows portrayed here would kill someone. Children watching , and possibly many adults do not realise this.

It is as if some spoilt child got a big budget to splurge and then had a bean feast, it all being too much fun to bother with pesky details like the actual fur trade, coaching actors for accents, and appropriate clothing.

Bean feast? / lots of violence, smashing, bashing, lots of blood and regular torture scenes.

And a good sprinkling of sex with a group of beautiful women who were curiously all the same age and unrealistically fragile. Lots of plunging necklines in freezing Tundra temperatures. Pwehey!! There will never be equality until plain women routinely get good parts as well as the routine very craggy men :) :)

It seems to be a bit profligate to isolate this film's income to a market segment which simply wants grossly over represented violence and sex.

There is a miserable lack of development of the plot which almost comes to a stand still part way through. This loss of pace is childishly compensated for by an absolute festival of bashing and blood on white snow,which scenes at times ran back to back jumping from one narrative strand to the other so that at one point, all bleeding copiously, just about everyone had been bashed. I don't know when they got time to make those fur coats.

Series 3 episode 2 and really nothing much has changed in the entire previous series.

Gorgeous location. Ridiculous accents and apart from the incessant punching and stabbing, uneventful.

The Chestnut Man (2021– )

Terrible terrible dubbing!

[3/10 · 9 October 2021]

Do Netflix use the same people for every film they dub? The vocal production and performance in this is terrible.

I might otherwise have enjoyed this fairly intriguing story if I were Danish .

As it is I was ultimately battered into semi coma by the unrealistic expressionless performance of the off screen actors.

There a breathy and dull 'flatness' to the delivery in most Netflix dubbed productions so that even if you were not looking at the screen you would still know in an instant that the voices are false.

Our female detective in this series delivered 3 lines at the beginning of episode 5 without even opening her mouth! Amazing!

This is not always the case. "The Cook of Castemar" for example was brilliantly dubbed and a great watch thereby

However, this one was awful imho.

Hard Times (2009)

Should have been funny but just wasn't

[3/10 · 8 September 2021]

Somehow this film just never got into its stride.

There was nothing to identify with.

The village had no shape. The camera just shuffled between walls and around random doorways as did the cast, where the charm of the village was constantly referred to.

It got off to a really slow start with a stilted script worthy of a 6th form play.

The cast seemed awkward as if they had only been together for a week or so, with no chemistry between them all at all.

The Irish famously blend humour with charm and great timing. This film had none of this.

It could have been a bit of a gem given hard work, dedication, self reflexive humour and actual comic timing. Very disappointing.

Outside In (2017)

Suicidally dull and pointless

[1/10 · 12 August 2021]

I am stunned to come here and see the adoring reviews of this film. .

Granted I am not keen on films about dull dull small-town America full of scenes shot in half-lit wood-walled rooms and peopled with dull check shirts, talking and looking as if they are all permanently on Prozac. Not my favourite genre at the best of times.

But this was written up as highly awarded so I gave it a go. I often wonder if these awards are summoned up by colleagues as a sympathy gesture for the lack of box office build-up engendered by wasting people's time and patience on some artistic self-indulgent binge.

I had its number on the opening shot... the released man in a car basks in the sunny window eating an apple. Really corny and school playish as we watch him lick his finger in closed-eyed satisfaction. Two minutes later he is throwing it up in a half-lit and curiously sordid toilet for some Prozaked lady's house or whatever venue they had picked for this warm-hearted homecoming. All very unsubtly symbolic. And as if we haven't yet got the entire, dull, half- lit, limp check shirted feel of the piece his old friend puts his head around the door and describes exactly what our hero's vomit smells like to him. Very accurate, realistic description ...but is it art?...and all downhill from there. Rave reviews say how 'life-like' this is. Sorry but I'm never a fan of art believing it is successfully mimicking 'real life. This is not a possibility. It can refer to it, comment on it with great skill and to wonderful effect, but to try to duplicate it in its realistically endless permutations is to produce a clod-hopping, dimly lit, cliche-ridden and boring monstrosity such as this.

Have just watched 'Winters Bone' a lovely piece ...check shirts, general grimnitude, dingy indoor shots, stark comment on backwoods life...but a great little film ...it can be done.

The Woman in White (2018)

Nothing of what it could be

[3/10 · 31 July 2021]

Heavy handed and unconvincing. I can't work out what what they are aiming for or who the target audience is.

It is difficult to give a hoot about any of these characters who are vapid and largely interchangeable. That is, apart from the Marion Halcombe character who contrived to be both boring and hugely annoying, neither effect seeming to be useful to the story. I exclude Mrs Vesey since I could watch and enjoy Joanna Scanlon make the best of any part despite the crazily banal lines she was given.

And the silly ghostly sound effects in the background are often totally out of whack with events, detracting from any natural sense of rising tension within the story I agree with others here that the delivery of lines throughout is embarrassingly wooden...like a school play. The entire cast come across in this way. There was a total absence of chemistry between any of them.

In addition the auduence is persistantly patronised. We cant be trusted to get what's happening. Everything is overexplained in the dialogue.

When I read the book years ago I'm sure I was not conscious of so much of the plot so early...where's the mystery !!

I have tried to rewatch this today in case I was being unfair 3 years ago. I've crawled through episide one and I'm finished.

It's as if the director feels too insecure to trust to the masterly narrative at hand.

Wilkie Collins was and remains a brilliant story teller. His narratives are historic. Would you crayon on a Van Gough? :)

The Bold Type (2017–2021)

Ok then became bad then ghastly

[2/10 · 11 May 2021]

The first series had promise. It was entertaining and just about avoided the obvious traps to degenerate into total pulp. There was some pretence of the pursuit of social justice and the main characters were reasonably distinguishable. The star was the older chief editor who was powerful and elegant and dedicated.

Series 2 buries the older woman in face powder and bleach blond and writes her influence and character out.

The soundtrack is flattened out All the characters speak in the same squeaky tone and the script is non existant. Horrible little soundbites interspersed with oohs and awsomes.

Clearly S1 was successful and someone else bought it and groomed it into their 'cute' soap wet dream. S2 E3 is running as I write and it is pap. Turning off. What a shame. It was almost good.

Its now an office version of Glee at its cheesy crap worst.

The One (I) (2021)

Agonisingly dreary

[2/10 · 8 May 2021]

The characters are either stupid or murderous Convincing motivations for any plot development missing Jerky narrative Clumsy flash backs at the beginning.

The female prime minister at the beginning was interesting but that plot element was thrown away.

I have reached episode 7 and just ca't face how badly this is doomed to end, I would like the life back which I have squandered watching this in hope. Of a flat and miserable saga coming to fruition.

The Last Post (2017)

Should have been so much better

[2/10 · 22 April 2021]

Terrible script Why does a script writer who which wants to be taken seriously think that maintaining a dismal humourless tone will do the trick . Tedium is the only result and a community entirely without banter, wit or irony lacks all verisimilitude.

Awful bland cliched plot.

The acting is decent given some of the awful cliches which had to be represented

We didn't talk about the Empire any more in the second half of the 1960s.

FASHION! In those days fashion was critical to almost everyone highly specific to within a couple of years.

Who on earth dressed Honor in 1950s clothes? NOONE was wearing Dior length gathered skirts...on the other hand no on looked like that reporter.

Not even our teachers at school would have dressed like Honor anymore. Having been a highly fashion conscious teenager at that time it completely distracted me to look at her.

And the men in their shawl collared short sleeved summer shirts ...had gone out with the arc by the.

ACCENTS!

Why did George's Arab nurse have a French accent?

Why was the agent working for British high command an American qualified to arrest and beat up a British officer.

Why does a script writer who which wants to be taken seriously think that maintaining a dismal humourless tone will do the trick . Tedium is the only result and a community entirely without banter, wit or irony lacks all verisimilitude.

The Dig (2021)

Gut wrenchingly postured

[3/10 · 3 February 2021]

I can only imagine this is and American vision of the English of the past. The insipid an desiccated presentation of English class differences. People were either 'stuck up' and boring or inarticulate, forelock tugging and boring. Creepy, cold piano chords accompany the most banal of conversations. as part of a truly deadly score throughout. Ralph Fiennes 'county' accent is full of public school flaws and in portraying a rather self conscious man, over egged it so much that I just felt embarrassed for him. . All players wooden through and through Terrible screenplay. Not a glimmer of humour or self reflexivity in any of these characters which renders them 2 dimensional. I'm glad that so many people seemed to enjoy it . What an utter waste of money it would have been otherwise. I was one of the few people I knew who found 'The English Patient' to be an insipid bore and am surprised to find that we have not evolved from this pretentious and silly imagining of the English class system of yore.

The Song of Names (2019)

A film which lost its way.

[2/10 · 2 December 2020]

A great first half after which exact point it fell apart. There was just not enough story left to fill the time. Either that or just not enough effort was made.

After a long second half meander full of half meanings and improbable motivations the now disappointing and unlikely lead character gets his chance to vindicate himself and give the weary viewer a chance of closure, of extracting some meaning from the previous hour's trudge through dramatic mediocrity.

HIs final performance which should have been the film's grand climax was just flabby compared with the scintillating playing of the boy at the outset of the film. This, despite the director having laboriously visually demonstrated the older man morphing back into the passionate little boy genius.

The superb idea of blending the Song of Names with the boy's life experience in this final piece of music was just thrown away in a rather dull an attenuated sentimental piece and the lovely blended part with cantor and violin did not last long enough to emotionally involve you. There was shot after shot of captivated faces which jarred with the weakly sentimental nature of this passionless piece which was unbelievably poor apart from the tantalisingly few bars where the two melodies met and blended so gloriously.

There was so much potential here for a magnificent tear jerking masterpiece. I loved the first half then felt abandoned, bored, and finally just disappointed.

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Faultless

[10/10 · 4 November 2020]

Beautifully filmed and directed, score costumes make up lighting photography editing all harmonious and delightful. Casting and acting so smooth that you hardly noticed them working! All part of a brilliant whole. Properly cried at the end :) Thank you Scott Frank I loved it

World on Fire (2019–2023)

1939 And All That

[3/10 · 11 November 2019]

A Memorable History of WW II, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates...

This has only received as many as 3 stars from me for Sean Bean's beautiful natural and understated performance. I also enjoyed Leslie Manville as Robina, the quietly terrifying mother of the romantic lead. Someone here says that she was impossibly unpleasant. She is much more complex that that, and women like her abounded when I was a child with similar prejudices and rigid, tormented suppression of most emotion notably love and rage. There were shades of her character from 'Harlots' (which I loved) but which worked well in this context. The third star goes to the little Polish boy character who was flawless and also to the enthusiastic, polite,kind ,funny and brave fighter pilot who signified those times very well.They broke the mould sadly.

As to all of the others no no no! They were horribly modern ! And I agree with someone here. Why is Lois's character a successful night-club singer, but ordinary town girl by day. THe latter would have been sufficient. It felt 'clunky'. And her pregnancy bump!/foam under the dress! You don't have to be very old to know that it is a truly recent thing to sport your late pregnancy in a slinky dress. She would have been told to go home possibly from the street and I don't believe she would have been allowed on a stage at all. Women just did not display pregnancy at home or publicly until the 1970s and it did not become common practice until late 80s at the earliest. I think this was the deal breaker for me concerning this 'show' The bump is ludicrously anachronistic and made me more sensitive the the multiple blunders this series comprises.

I was drawn to this at first. It is clearly high budget. Some of the scenic touches are very good. I Iike that steam comes from the teacups and the hearth fires are realistic. But I am haunted by Helen Hunt's tormented face. Has she had a horribly unhappy life ? I'm deeply sorry for her for if so, but her face in repose is really worrying. She does not have the kind of presence to overcome such difficulties. What was her character meant to be? Quietly intelligent, calm, kind and steely strong was what I thought she was going for. Then some idiot director has her suddenly hold a steak knife at a German officers and spit venom at him for suggesting she go to bed with him in return for a favour for her nephew. He's an occupying soldier for God's sake governed by a force by then known for its random and capricious brutality. Her character knew this better than most according to the flimsy plot. "I did my best and he just wanted to do me!" she blubbers to her nephew afterwards. Paris is occupied. She wants information and behaves like an hysterical adolescent out of the blue .....oh I give up! Even just mocking him and walking away would have involved deadly risk and she would have had to pack her bags pronto, American or not.

Referring back to flimsy plots the main man gets sent to Poland as a terrorist spy (because his few months of living in Poland will have rendered him as fluent in Polish as a native and be undetectable) and immediately 'bumps into' his ex ..also spy girlfriend in a wood....perlease !!! Does the writer have any idea of how big Poland is? It would have been coincidence enough in Hull.

One brilliant director was required to keep this badly written pastiche afloat. It is disrespectful to both audiences and the material to rotate between several. Why should their entertainment be prioritised? Any one of them could have worked harder and more respectfully and still allowed it to speak to audiences of today.

I won't go on. But will finally say that I will watch it to the end having made it to episode 7. Not without a feeling of faint disgust at myself. A war which cost more than 75 million lives should be dramatised with skill, *precision* and sensitivity.

The King (I) (2019)

Understated, believable and brilliant

[9/10 · 2 November 2019]

Beautifully cast and executed.

Nothing was overdone.

Sensitively directed and very well acted.

Well paced, Nothing stood out as overstated but with great attention to detail.

A battle scene to make you think about what a battle actually is.

And, feminist as I am, I was nonetheless relieved that a woman was not forced into the 'plot' to 'make it fair'.

I'll be happy to watch this again.

The Name of the Rose (2019)

Terribly Disappointing

[3/10 · 12 October 2019]

Clearly there was an ample budget. The costumes, locations and attention to Medieval detail were brilliant. The lighting was clever. The casting of the supporting actors was visually brilliant. A rich variation in ages and craginess of face and body. If it were a docu-drama organised by a museum curator and a couple of designers then I'd give it 8 stars.

Beyond this and as an artistic representation of a stunning masterpiece of a book I think it stinks! The direction was worthy of the poorest am dram first night. The pace was deadly. The screenplay was a chaotic abomination which betrays the original text with its pointless additions. The two leading characters are watered down to the point of extinction. I liked watching Tarturro, he is a very charismatic man but he understates his character far too heavily. There is none of the hugely self disciplined power of Guglielmo da Baskerville. And his companion is just ...dull. Not the highly strung innocent of the book. Why they bothered to half heartedly reference Asdo's observation of the medieval door surround I don't understand. The ignorant novice's first sight of the bas relief of biblical scenes around the church door is one of the most moving moments in the book. Deal with it or leave it out ! Really really bad direction all around. imho

Finally the sound quality!!! It is deplorable. You cannot hear the dialogue in the first scene over the monotonal musical effects ...again so so amateurish. And later in the church the effect is of one ambient mic somewhere in the middle of the space randomly picking up voices of varying volume. Really poor. In addition, all of the cast spoke with flat monotonous tonality in a farcially generic "Iyam spicking in a furrin accawnt" pre-formed dialect which sounded just silly and became excruciating to listen to as the numbers rose. A weird mix of German French and Italian but not any of these really. Just generally trying to sound 'foreign' Why bother at all? Then I noticed in the titles that here was a dubbing specialist? If it was dubbed then this explains a great deal of my frustration. I find dubbed films to be ridiculous and this was no exception. If it wasn't dubbed then it certainly seemed to be! This series clearly had access to a huge budget and could have been magnificent with an ounce of passion and expertise in both the direction and in the delivery of all of the characters. Shame.

Keeping Faith (2017–2021)

Deadly slow

[3/10 · 10 March 2018]

I h ave just reached half way through the 3rd episode and turned it off. The pace is so so slow. I also agree with others here that it is overacted. Everyone is in the same mode of super gloomy and apprehensive.

None of the characters are developed. Nothing has happened !!!! And I can see that it is not going to . Just more cheesy background music while everyone gazes mysteriously at each other. Far far too much time is given to 'the gaze'

Boring !