tradu-06897
Not being a fan of the Harry Potter series, I was glad to find such a good drama based on a book by Rowling. (I haven't read the book, but would like to.) To disagree with another critic on IMDb, the death visions are well done. They borrow, in their simplicity, from traditional mummer's theater, and are one of my favorite aspects of the show, along with the scenery and interiors. Themes and plot twists are as intriguing as the town's different spaces are colorful. The scene of a recovering addict's tortuously long wait for a bus is perfect. Bravo to all involved.
ash-78884
Do we really have to be reminded of how disgusting suburban British life can be. How miserable can one place be? I'm from the West-Country and I really. And why is this entertaining? We watched the first episode most of the way through. I was so depressed and infuriated with the horrible characters. There is not one character that could be the shining light in the hell-hole. I was so miserable that I forgot that I could switch it off. I eventually came around and did so. I read the plot on this site and I am so glad I will see no more of this garbage. Suicide, rape, more drugs and more hateful children as well as the horrid adults. I need a good comedy after this crap.
Bilkoboy
It's difficult to know where to start with this very disappointing drama. Set in a beautiful rural village where millionaire business people and professionals in their grade I listed manor houses live but a well struck 5 iron from a sink estate full of drug addled benefit scroungers and ne'er-do-wells, it seems to be attempting to highlight cultural and social divides, unfairness and inequity in our society. Fair enough, reasonable basic idea.The problem was that the story was, quite frankly, rubbish. Initially it looked like a small guy vs. nasty rich property developer yarn, but this never really materialised in any meaningful or interesting way. When the impassioned champion of said small guy, and always excellent, Rory Kinnear dies at the end of a rather slow scene setting first episode, a from-the-grave on-line ghostly presence appeared to be setting up episodes 2 and 3 to develop into a ghost story (it didn't), or a taut psychological drama (didn't do this either). Instead it meandered between low level soap opera story threads (which mostly led nowhere interesting), made trite, obvious, uninteresting social commentary on far too many topics to be impactful, and ended up as a tragi-drama with a completely random drowning crow-barred into the story to provide some sort of "conclusion".Low points - Gambon and McKenzie and Richard Glover were cartoonishly "bad", Emilia Fox's character was totally peripheral. The final scenes when the young boy wanders off and is then effectively abducted, not 20 yards from his mother by a well meaning doctor, who never thought to look for, or shout out to, any parents before carting him off home, was just ridiculous.High points - Abigail Lawrie and Rory Kinnear were excellent, Keeley Hawes pretty good. Rural town setting was very nice indeed.
journalist1
What a huge, filth-ridden crater Rowling has made of her career with the publication of her first 'adult' novel, so it is with no surprise what a perfect bed-fellow she has in the left- leaning British Broadcasting Corporation because we've always known the BBC hate rural Britain and the people that live there but this production takes their bias and distaste to a totally new level and while the BBC portray this as a fictional drama people would be astonished to discover many within the BBC see rural Britain through such a twisted and perverted lens. No-one I've spoken to has for one moment ever been confronted with the behaviour characters in this crude, distasteful rubbish calling itself a modern British drama affect. I'm appalled but not surprised the BBC are fronting this show however, as I am convinced they believe the behaviour therein is typical of contemporary Britain, perhaps that is so in their little sordid lives, that is not however, the way the rest of us live ours. We all know how low the quality of BBC productions have fallen in recent years but this truly is a new low.
AD
