The first two to three episodes were really intriguing. They had a great concept story and fantastic characters in the supposed villain and funny brother. Suddenly it started going downhill from episode 4 making no sense whatsoever. Rating went down further 2 stars after episode 6 - totally senseless now. Its exhausting to finish this now. The lead was the worst cast but the writer just deviated from gold to a puddle of mess
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jayeshdave783 February 2021
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hayley969 April 2021For the first six episodes, I wondered why this nifty show didn't land somewhere for a second season after Esquire TV shut down. Then we get episode seven. The new cop is owned by the bad guys. Apparently, Nelson Clay, a known criminal, has the run of the police station. Meanwhile Martin, the lowlife brother of our star, Jean, romances Sonny, Nelson Clay's wife. An overweight guy dressed perpetually in a t-shirt and hoodie, somehow seduces a cold eye killer's wife.
There are more contrived situations and bad plot devices. You really begin to wonder what Clay keeps Jean around for. The last three episodes are a mess. -
jayeshdave7826 January 2021The lead really is super poor in acting skills. Looks constipated most of the time and lacks expressions otherwise. The remaining cast is great but the writer really needed to use the chars there Bette and make this a dark drama instead of showing some justified side of a character who is shady to begin with.
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dfsdsdfas20 March 2015I didn't do any research, i just looked it up and read 'crime scene' cleaner, no unsympathetic looking actors or other things like that would rule it out for me or indicate it could be the type of series i am not interested in. it definitely gives you a vibe of 'dexter' and 'breaking bad' in sense of the tight, personal and professional connection to death and the dead - and the drugs (yeah, kinda lots of them, so a major focal point). i very much like the french vibe too, it's a counter part to being too obvious going in a certain direction - you can't read the main characters that well. i am always looking for new series that have something more than making noise in the background. and although it has some familiar parts, as i mentioned before, it has a whole new feeling to it. and for me the type of 'functional psychopath' is very entertaining to watch. i am very optimistic for forthcoming episodes..
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gbbonkers21 February 2018There were things to like about this series. Some of the acting was quite good - Denis Menochet was remarkable. Marc-Andre Grondin certainly had his moments but his brooding and the constant look on his face of disgust or anger or hopelessness or whatever it was, got a little old. There were some plot twists, some pausible but many more, implausible. Overall I had very mixed feelings about this series. It didn't help that I couldn't separate Brendan Coyle from his role in this versus his role in Downton Abbey.
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untilnow9929 October 2016My only regret is that I can't be a newbie and watch this series all over again from scratch, that's how much pleasure it gave me. What terrific casting. What great writing. You never know what's going to happen next. Wonderful.
One thing that I loved the most was the brother "Martin." He looks much like Robert Mitchum looked in Cape Fear, if R. M. had been much more hirsute. What a fun "bad boy" character. Denis Ménochet (Martin) exudes the same combination of quiet menace, boxer boy body and charisma as Mitchum had, too. Lots more of a softy at heart, though. A very good brother to have around, if only to make your life a lot more exciting. A real treat to watch.
The whole series is just one big luscious bag of tasty fun. I envy those of you who will be seeing it for the first time. Enjoy. -
bbriddell31 December 2015I read the other review & decided to give this show a try, I was pleasantly surprised.
The only show to attempt to compare it to (pre-watch) was Dexter & about the only other show you can relate to when you first start watching.
The show develops on its own & by the 6th ep the story starts to deepen. When you start watching try a few episodes back to back. Eps 1 to 4 were all watchable & I wanted to see how the story would develop. I was hooked by the 6th ep & looking forward to 7th ep.
The acting, writing, directing, sets, locations, story, & etc. . are gre8 and keep you engaged in the story.
If this is a French production, then the French have a lot of great shows for us English speakers. The only barrier was language & this show is in English. This is the 2nd French show in English that I really like more than most Shows here in the U.S. Most shows here in the U.S. are predictable, cliché', &/or boring.
The sophistication of this show is well worth the watch & a welcome break from the current SOS in the US.
Enjoy. -
rbost-7023325 August 2021Very poor ending if intended to be finale. OK if Season 2 is in the works. You kind of have to pull for these hapless brothers. Bates (Downton Abbey reference) isn't that convincing as a mob boss. His perma-smirk just doesn't give off Limey Mob you know? The 'romance' between Julie and Michael/Victor was ridiculous. Poor writing there fellas. OK, maybe a 6 but since I watched all ten episodes I'll give it a seven.
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fraintina14 February 2021Well that was time in my life l'll never get back ! This Series is not even so bad, it's good. It's just a mess that makes no sense at all. The story leaves you feeling cheated, conned and soiled. It'd be more entertaining and rewarding to stare at a plug.
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It seems to me that the writter of this drama must see themselves in the main characters brother as this baffels me as to how such a very un assuming, standard ( to say the least) man is portrayed as gods gift to women. It be littles the way this is suppose to be realistic in a sense but i guess once if that is what the writter choses to depict ( a reflection of themselves in him) then good effort.
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anlau6131 June 2016This show has excellent plotting, acting, and strong themes. It's suspenseful and entertaining. It's also filmed beautifully. Other reviewers mentioned Dexter--there is a similarity with the crime scenes, but I think this show handles that element with more artistry than Dexter did, and also handles the main character's exploration of the darkness people are capable of with more elegance and certainly more complexity.
Most of all, it's an incredibly astute and surprising character study, not just of the main characters, but of an entire cast of weird and wonderful people. Not one character is stock. I can't remember the last time I deeply cared about each and every character on a show. Some of them I hated (one, in particular, is one of the most flawed and frightening I can ever recall on TV), but I cared what happened to them all and could relate in some way to even the most disturbing of them.
A great show. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before I saw it on Netflix and for some reason decided to try it. -
andy-lowe-email20 December 2018Just a horrible series. The brother is just so obnoxious and inconceivably oblivious to just how obnoxious he s.
This is a not very well done version of a tried and tested formula: a basically good person does something bad and then each decision that is made from then on makes matters worse. So many other shows have used this formula successfully that it's impossible to watch something that doesn't. -
davesimpson-2524521 January 2018This quasi-french-british drama is entertaining enough but is ultimately yet another example of a show squandering its potential to go from being a "good" tv show to a "great" one. The premise starts out well: a professional crime-scene cleaner (Jean Bastiere) is forced to work for the London mob after falling into serious financial trouble, giving the mob essentially the invaluable ability to erase any trace of a murder. However, Jean's unwavering moral compass means he is fundamentally against this from the get-go and it only takes a few episodes before he's had enough and begins looking for a way out. A far more intriguing direction to take the plot would have been a more "Breaking Bad"-esque scenario in which Jean comes to accept and eventually revel in his new found second life and the viewer gets to enjoy all the unpredictable consequences that follow. Alas, it was not to be, and what we are left with is a mildly compelling but predictable ending.
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nilsonsc10 January 2020...for the fact that we will never see a second season.
This show is simply sensational: The plot, the characters, the acting, the soundtrack, the dialogues. Everything seems to be well-thought to be there. As others have said, it reminds a bit of Breaking Bad, but don't expect the same quality, of course. I really wish Netflix or any other big company would make a decent final season for it, even after so long. -
henry-6952029 August 2016Just finished watching this series on Netflix and loved it. Can't wait for series 2.
I watch films and dramas to be entertained and realise they are fiction not reality so a bit of artistic licence is given. Were there elements which made me question the script? Yes, the daughter possibly would be more believable were she 14 or 15 in the script not 13 but as the father of a 15 year old daughter myself maybe I'm over sensitive in this area.
I too wouldn't have minded more foreign language where appropriate accompanied by subtitles but a mass audience might disagree.
I found the characters fully believable and immersed myself in their lives. There was enough subtlety in the acting to allow degrees of hatred, sympathy or identification. The storyline kept me engaged throughout the episodes filling in gaps as it went along.
For me it was a no question 10/10
Watched it without knowing anything about the series in advance. -
I enjoyed this series but should have checked if there was a second as it leaves you hanging what happens next. For me a total waste of time watching this. They have no plans to make a second series. A real shame. Just a warning some off you will get your teeth into this (if you like black humour) but it will leave you disappointed. Hence the one star. However will keep searching the net for any change of plans regarding second series.
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bluepink16 January 2022
- body parts and matter being cleaned off places
- graphic, often aggressive sex scenes, sometimes in dirty places / circumstances
- disgusting storylines inc. Sex with a dead body
I'm surprised if anyone can eat food whilst watching this.
On top of that, the main characters are unlikeable & most storylines would literally never happen. It should be advertised as a dark comedy. -
This is perhaps one of the worst TV dramas I've ever tried to view and tried to complete the first episode. It's bad but I'm not surprised at all since anytime when the British film or TV dramas trying to make up something related to the mobster, gangster and so-called the British underworld, they usually turned out to be sucked to the extreme and as predicted, this show turned out to be exactly the same. I just don't know how could it possible this lame, laughable series would have fooled so many viewers and critics to give high rating.
Bad screenplays, bad scenarios, bad plots, and most of all, eye-sore poor acting of all the actors involved in this series. It's laughable instead of believable with terrible dialog. The acting of the two brothers are just as bad as you could imagine, other supporting cast are even worse beyond any word could describe.
Some genre definitions we need to clarify here: When you define 'Drama', it should be a 'Drama'; 'Thriller' should be 'Thriller', 'Crime' be 'Crime', 'Comedy' should be 'Comedy', and so on. But if you try to mix a 'Crime/Thriller' with 'Comedy', it will be like trying to mix oil with water, it'd never work, the result would be just turn such stupid mixture into a 'Farce'. This series is exactly like this, other than the poor screenplay and the stupid scenarios, lousy plot, the miserable casting job further deteriorated it and transform it into some deformed god-awful big laugh, insulting the viewers' I.Q.
So far, anything from the British entertaining biz, except they are adaptations from the classic, such as Dickens or other classic literature, all the so-called 'English Mysteries' created by those housekeeping wives created on their kitchen tables are nothing but self-righteous yet laughable shallow, unbelievable and ridiculous products. Those laughable dreamed-up 'Murder' cases, 'Inspector So-and-So', anything related to 'Police', just turned out to be laughable. That's why Dick Francis would have created a absolutely stupid character as a 'horse jockey' to be a crime solving P.I., and more and more house wives or even old spinsters to be the crime solvers, and most laughable fact is that these people have created so many murders in England that might have already wiped out about 1/3 of their population.
This series is too awful to watch and not worth writing a review for it, so the purpose of this review is just to warn off some people not to get brain damage and impair their I.Q. -
ShankRedemption10 November 2016An absolute must series! (Well you obviously could pass, but more fool you). People that gave a low rating must have been distracted or just negative people for crime dramas in general. It's enticing, thrilling, sick and twisted, humorous at parts without being cheesy like some series are, it's certainly not a comedy.
First couple episodes are the slowest, but like all good series, necessary to paint the picture and set the journey off, having said that, the first two are still very good!
The series at times reminds me of Luther, in its feel of a show. However, it's not a cop investigation series in the same manner. Without giving any spoilers, I can see how some are making a similarity of one aspect of Spotless to that of Breaking bad, but it really isn't like watching Breaking Bad in the slightest, so don't expect either repetition or plagiarism.
I would have gave it 9.5 if the option was there, as 'Stranger Things' and 'Peaky Blinders' are the 10 bench mark. But going down to 9 seemed to unfair for a rare series that got me to watch all 10 episodes in 2 days! -
david-8462518 June 2016I watched the first 6 episodes. The first two were intriguing and I thought the premise had a lot of possibilities. Good acting (except for the two French guys) reasonable dialogue, bit 'Hollywood' production. But watching almost an entire episode of the two supposedly nasty protagonists hammering away at each other while discussing the meaning of life, that was just too much ... too silly, too unrealistic, totally absurd. Who writes this crap ? It's like another series that came out a couple of years ago called The American. Great premise, great opening, then it just petered out with absurdities. I'm not going to bother with the rest of the series. Waste of time.
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roesseff22 August 2018Where do I start, sex around every corner, gratuitous violence - lots of it, necrophilia, the list goes on. It's gory combination of blood and brains, coupled with very casual and graphic sex makes this fall flat! When will directors realise that it's not necessary to fill in every blank for viewers. We're not idiots.
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Toominator18 February 2016*****Possible Spoilers for Spotlight and Breaking Bad****
There have been comparisons to Breaking Bad for Spotlight, and I can easily see why. While Walter White's profession as a chemist gave him the perfect opportunity to segue to the dark side of drug production, Jean Baptiste, as a crime scene cleaner, opens a different, but similar door to the criminal world.
The writing, performances, and score in this series are so very good. Brendan Coyle is amazing as the crime boss.
I'm not sure I agree with the choice of having Jean's character involved in an affair, being that his wife is a hottie, not a bitchy character, and that, along with his two kids, makes it a tough sell.
The score edits are spot on - composer Neil Davidge demonstrates some true artistry in the music choices and composition.
Well done! I only wish this series was more readily available online. -
aprilmike-5199114 August 2019Half way into the series and I must say its all good so far.
I like the way that each episode is complete yet here is enough of the back story seeping through to keep you guessing!
Its strange watching a scani noir esc program based in my old home country.
I have watch this with subs but it may be possible to see it with a dubbed view, not sure just going on what others have said.
So far not a baget or citron in site! -
Total Rip Off Snooze Fest. This "Spotless" should be paying a few different Shows it steals ideas from. It has moments of originality but they are shoehorned into the Show for effect without reason or even any effort to present the vaguest of logic. Not one person behaves in a believable fashion over the piece. The story swiftly becomes embarrassingly repeatedly contrived, and laughably Incredible. The main guys are dullards and you don't care about anyone in it. Appalling drivel. It's Full of a smug presumption that the viewers will accept any gimmicky twist or turn thrown at them. Staggeringly arrogant of them and, from the millions that switched off before it was scrapped in France, utterly wrongheaded. It comes across as if the original scripts were written in French, then translated into English by a non-English speaker.