Good-Will

So let's start by stating that I've never played the games so I'm writing this as someone who is coming in cold to this world and these characters.

I thought that I could watch Walton Goggins in anything, but after half of one episode then had to revise that idea.

These observations are mild spoilers for the first half hour, but not for the season.

So, the first five minutes where nobody in the house notices the intense flash of a nuclear bomb detonating was odd since it was pretty damned bright.

Then a raid where the victims were still reacting with surprise 5 minutes after it started.

Then another few scenes in a training camp leading up to a completely baffling promotion.

Finally some poorly scripted cartoon like villains digging up Goggins.

Maybe there's a reason that this seemed so poorly written and directed that fans of the game might understand, but it seemed like a very amateurish attempt to wring something from a bit of gore and a bit of lore that has completely escaped me.

Shame, because I'm a big fan of cartoon like gore and also science fiction.

Maybe this will do it for you but it certainly didn't do anything for me.

This is what a first draft would look like if you tried to shoehorn the plot of The Talented Mr. Ripley into Brideshead Revisited.

But like most first drafts it would be unrefined, somewhat incoherent and the finer details would need to be thought through to create a finished and polished product.

I can understand the appeal and some of the high ratings from people who are impressed by luscious cinematography , have a soft spot for English aristocracy and appreciate some fine acting (Although Keoghan is mediocre here), but I've honestly seen better plotting and pacing in an episode of Tom and Jerry.

The last five minutes also undermine everything that's come before and is an insult to the audience's intelligence.

Just spent a week seeing friends in Oxford where this is the talk of the town, but that talk isn't flattering, and rightly so.

I can understand the poor ratings from reviewers who expected this to be a longer version of the original film (Malkovich and Close), but this is a prequel to that.

So although I was initially disappointed then as I continued watching then I began to really enjoy it.

It has all the backstabbing, betrayals, machiavellian plotting and intrigue of the film (and book) but for some reason then people didn't like it.

I really don't know why.

I really don't know why and am sad that it was cancelled since we'll never know who the "Duc" is and what happened in the intervening period between this series and the film/book.

Jimmy McGovern's original series was brilliantly written to expose the vagaries of UK law, where people who didn't fit into societal norms but had no intention to harm found themselves up in court and were sentenced/released due to the strict definitions and sentencing guidelines of a particular crime, whether they deserved it or not

It was a plea for a sense of humanity expected of a legal system which found people guilty or innocent based on what most people would call a technicality.

Technicalities in law can work to vindicate the powerful and to punish the meek, but this US series seems to take the entire concept of justice to a different place where good always triumphs.

It's just not very exciting to watch an episode where the conclusion is so easily predictable.

My advice would be to watch the original BBC series which was far more thought provoking than this.

(This review written after watching the first two episodes, FYI)

I absolutely adore Stephen Graham who chooses tough, hard hitting drama rather than any routine roles offered to him.

So it's personally disappointing to only give this a 7/10 because I think it could have been so much better.

The real life situations are hard enough to bear, but when dramatised then I just felt that they should have had more impact.

Acting was great, direction was a bit iffy and the editing was bearable.

But here was something missing which I can't quite put my finger on.

Maybe there was more of a story here regarding the conversion of Graham's character, or a deeper analysis of the different right wing factions and how they differed from each other and what drove them apart.

I could be alone in this, but I was disappointed.

I was really looking forward to this, but my only criticism is that it didn't really know what it was trying to do.

It's a tough job to cover everything that happened because there was simply too much going on to fit into the time allowed, but no mention of Track&Trace and the PPE scandals was very odd to say the least.

Some judicious editing would have made this more engaging because we don't learn much from continually watching people walking around and saying hello to their colleagues.

All the bits about the dog (Dylan) should never have made it to the final cut.

6/10 because it's above average but nowhere near as insightful as it could have been.

I had read about the reports that Dan McCrum published in the FT concerning Wirecard's nefarious activities, but didn't know the intricate details apart from the fact that he was put under immense pressure to retract his accusations both by Wirecard themselves (using lawyers and spooks), and by the German financial authorities.

This excellent documentary shows just how far the German authorities went to protect Wirecard because it was a home grown FinTech success story which blinded them to the fact that it was committing fraud on a massive scale.

The information I didn't know was how Russia was involved and why the company was founded in the first place.

Absolutely amazing documentary which shows just how far Russia had infiltrated into the German financial system, and I can guess into the London financial system too.

For the people that didn't understand why it was included then gave up before the final episode: you missed something that the rest of us would say was amazing.

Not the quality of the production itself, which seemed well done, but for the impact it had on the locals and particularly on the families involved, some of whom were in the audience.

I'll admit that I did wonder why they were spending any time on it, but it paid off spectacularly.

Most people would have realised that Burt had employed some fairly dodgy interviewing techniques by about episode 4, but seeing his reaction to both the documentary and what he had been told about the play was illuminating.

And then it crashes down to a 1/10 rating for sheer stupidity in every respect in that episode. So a 3/10 overall.

That's probably the single worst episode of a TV series that I've ever watched in my life (Although some of the episodes of The Following run it close).

Why did the writers decide to make every character as thick as two short planks all of a sudden?

I read an interview with them somewhere in which they claimed that every character had to have a reason for their actions otherwise they would rewrite the script.

After watching Episode 5 in horror (not the good kind), I realised that that claim was clearly rubbish as the characters made some unbelievably dim-witted choices in order to drive what was left of the plot forward. There were three scenes where the supposed tension resulted in me almost laughing out loud.

I'd say I've had enough but will probably watch the rest of it to see what further depths it can sink to.

BTW: There were a few early signs that this might be a stinker.

I mean, nothing screams credibility more than a single middle aged man called Mark Sargent who claims that he's not looking for celebrity more than the T-Shirt he wears with "I'm Mark Sargent" on the front.

I hope that he manages to get together with that purported (by a splinter group within the flat earth movement) "CIA agent" because her first name ends in cia whose only source of credible information is herself.

A marriage made in heaven.

I don't know about you but I've watched a whole shedload of UK based police dramas and once you learn pretty much anything about how the police have to obey rules, and that there's a methodology to police work, then you get a sense of when something is well written, even though it may be unrealistic.

But this...this.. is just unbelievable in almost every respect.

Countless times it sacrifices any sort of realism for cheap thrills and although I watched it until the end, then that was more because I was laughing at it rather than admiring it.

If you're looking for a reasonably well acted drama but with a mediocre script and an absurd sense of "turn it up to 11" plot where you need constant stimulation then this is for you.

4/10 is about right since it held my attention enough to watch until the end, but it's below average for this sort of production.

I liked episode 1 which was fun and also funny.

Episode 2 was good too, apart from the ending which was drivel.

Episode 3 continued to get worse with some of the most inept plotting I've ever seen.

From then on it continued in the same vein of utter idiocy, with any semblance of solid police work completely abandoned as poorly written characters did even more stupid things to drag this sorry piece of poorly written excrement to a shoddy and unbelievably poor conclusion.

Everyone involved should feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

After watching all four episodes then it's very difficult to decide whether this is absolutely superb or a piece of overindulgent tripe.

I can see why Olivia Coleman signed up, since her husband wrote it, and I can see why another great thespian, David Thewlis, would love acting with her so all is good there.

But the style seems to be haphazard and the narrative voice is confusing.

Maybe I'll watch it all again and make a decision, but it wasn't at all what I expected and that may be a really good or really bad thing.

I was really hoping that this would be great, but it turned out to be thoroughly mediocre.

How Frank became the leader of such a bunch of dimwits is only explicable when you look at the people in his family who are younger than him, all of whom are as thick as a brick.

I was hoping for someone, anyone to have a feel for a concept known as "Strategy" which involves a modicum of planning.

But no, all we get is a bunch of hot headed idiots who's only achievements are being members of the Kinsella family.

Even Amanda who is meant to be the smart one has the strategic planning capabilities of a fruitfly.

There may be a second season/series of this but having watched all eight episodes of this then I'll spend my time doing something more worthwhile.

Excellent acting and direction can't make up for poor writing, so a 6/10.

This might take a while.

If your background is writing soap operas and the odd episode of a well established drama then when you venture into different territories then the least you can do is some basic research on the fundamentals.

There are enough investigative police dramas/thrillers around that we've all seen and they range from excellent to rubbish.

To stand out from the pack then you need an understanding of three things: 1: The basics of the way that police investigate crimes 2: The technology available to them 3: The law So when all these are basically ignored then you need to have a plot which demands attention and characters who take decisions in a way that suggests some sort of rational thought, and also characters who are consistent.

This could have been over and done with if they'd called the police to start with, but no. Let's portray these characters as simpletons.

None of them seem to have a clue about GPS tracking on mobile phones which the police could have used to place them at the scene of the crime within an hour or two after the start of the investigation.

None of them seem to care about leaving footprints, DNA, (Wash the boot doesn't cut it) or CCTV camera footage.

The police were completely inept in just about every way possible (You should investigate all leads, gather data and then that will lead you to the main suspects).

The one lawyer is a cardboard cutout of what people who don't know anything about the law think that lawyers do.

I could go on, but after the first episode I thought it was trash and like my favourite laugh-a-thon (The Following) I was hooked simply because I couldn't imagine it getting worse.

But it did.

The casting, cinematography and acting were excellent, so that's why it gets 2/10, but the plot seems like it was written by pasting together all the worst bits discarded by better writers of better series, whatever the genre.

I thought this was great since the psychologist was always listening to the questions that the patient/client asked her, and used that information to eventually understand what happened.

Without giving anything away then this is what good psychologists do, and they will reflect on their own experiences (whether personal or from previous cases) to come to a conclusion about what caused certain actions and the state of mind of their patient/client preceding that and after that.

I loved Cracker (10/10, showing my age here) and thought that this was along the same lines of a vulnerable psychologist confronting a very difficult case.

So, 8/10.

I'd been recommended this by a friend and had no luck finding it anywhere. It is a bit dated and some of the acting is iffy, but the actual plot is excellent. All four episodes are on YouTube and definitely available outside the UK and probably there too. Enjoy!

I suppose that people found this funny because they thought that a bunch of sorry physicists with personality issues was going to be a blast. The characters are just sadsacks and very little to laugh at. Couple of scenes made me smile but after so many people recommended this to me then I expected some well written and witty characters. Nope. Caricatured stereotypes are easy to write and they really have nothing to say that isn't predictable and generally tedious.

I'm a great fan of Iannucci's previous work but what on earth (or off earth) happened here? I'm a Brit so understand satire, irony and already knew that this was never going to be a Sci-Fi show. Just mentioning that because these are the accusations levelled at anyone who gives this a poor rating. It's simply not funny and I can't believe that such a talented group of writers and an excellent cast can create something which so consistently fails to hit the mark in any way. Maybe they didn't know what to aim for but I was expecting this to be excellent and it's absolutely dire. I watched it in the vain hope that the initial episodes were just a setup for the big punchline, but that doesn't seem to be on the event horizon. In the immortal words of Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher: "You useless waste".

If you can find another an action film with a cast this good, but that divorces itself from logic, piles cliche after cliche on top of one another and fails to amuse apart from making you laugh when the plot is as risible as this, then please tell me so I can avoid it. Three stars for making me laugh at how easy it was to predict EVERYTHING that happened in this film and for the incompetence of the writing and plotting. I won't go into the litany of basic errors that this film makes, but hey, if you're amused by a few explosions and gunfights and absolutely nothing else then enjoy.

This starts off with a dark but humourous episode and then gets darker and less humorous, but by the end of episode 3 then I was wondering how on earth the plot would be resolved in the fourth and final episode. No need to worry. That was a joy to watch in every way, with the writing and acting simply top notch. p.s. The guy that gave it 3/10 was referring to another series of the same name from 2016. Not this series.

Great sets and it captures the atmosphere of Prague in that era to perfection. But what was the point of it? There weren't many sympathetic characters apart from the wife, and although the plot twisted and turned a lot, which I liked, then by the end scene I felt let down and a bit baffled by what the producers were trying to achieve. As a "slice of life" type of production then it worked to a degree, but it could have been so much better with less characters and more background details. Above average so 6/10.

This could have been good, but most of the budget seems to have been spent on location filming, and although the locations are great then you need to put a decent plot in place, then add talented writers who can write a credible script. Instead, what we have is an ever increasing use of clichés and tropes which is massively disappointing. It may get better but after watching five episodes then the likelihood of that seems extremely slim, so I'm giving up on it since there are far better shows to watch than this.

I don't understand why anyone would find this funny or even vaguely amusing. I watched the first two and a half episodes in the hope that it would become better, but it became obvious that it just wasn't my cup of tea. To those of you who enjoyed it then kudos to you, but this was a complete waste of talent and seemed to be written by a group of 11 year olds. "Let's put Matt Berry in a historical comedy again, but make him swear more!" is not the secret of comedy gold. I love Matt Berry in almost everything he's been in, but he desperately needs a new agent if this is anything to go by.

The general tenor of the reviews here seem to sway along party lines as would be expected, but everyone has to admit that US politics is tainted by big money and vested interests. Even though they serve my interests then I'm mature enough to realise that very wealthy people like me have a duty to perform in trying to re-establish a sense of societal justice, so I'd be happy to try and redress the imbalance between those politicians who are concerned for their community vs those who seem to be driven by the opportunities for further self enrichment which power bestows. The women who lost against more organised and better funded campaigns are the future of the country, and I believe every country needs politicians who truly represent their constituents After watching this documentary then I'll be dedicating myself to that cause.