After the commercial & critical acclaim of "National Treasure" & the success of its follow-up "Kiri", Jack Thorne bravely returns for a third time to create another topical 4-part drama for Channel 4 with "The Accident"... And whilst its two predecessors launched strongly with their debut installments, this one falters almost immediately from the outset, failing to establish any real sense of authenticity or identity (which made the previous series so distinctive) with either the storytelling or (at the very least) the filmmaking. Gone is the sense of an original voice; here, we have bland, unimaginative, ineffectiveness, devoid of the creativity & flair that the others possessed, which made them so appealing.
Sandra Goldbacher's style (or lack of it) doesn't conceivably seem to bring anything new to the project - that we haven't already seen before - nor does she impress with her direction of the cast; Euros Lyn & Marc Munden both managed to imbue their work with personality & uniqueness, challenging their actors creatively - in order to procure convincing, career best performances from them during production whilst capturing scenes in a visually arresting way - but the cinematography in this is bland (that's odd considering the brilliant Ashley Rowe is DoP) & Sarah Lancashire's portrayal here (for instance) is an absolute mess, which (again) seems very uncharacteristic, since she's incredibly talented. Thus, I couldn't help but notice the deterioration in quality since that's reflected in the decrease in the consistency of her own character. Budgetary constraints can't believably be blamed either as the pilot evidently recieved a sizeable investment (for the crew to be able to visualise a large scale set piece) so I'm unconvinced limitations were the cause of this grievance... The debut's simply poor.