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We don't need an invasion of the body - snatchers in 2012 Britain,we have mainstream television to turn us into vegetables.Soporific,banal, derivative,what happened to Lord Reith's promise? As good an example as can be found(along with the grossly over - rated "Downton Abbey") is "The Paradise",which is really TV- by- numbers same old same old stuff the the BBC bosses obviously believe will be bread and cicuses to their audiences as they wait glumly for the country to collapse around them into some sort of a black hole. Set in a posh store deep in Catherine Cookson country (when will they ever learn that the Geordie accent is the most difficult to master?),it centres round the Millinery Department run by Miss Sara Lancashire who had clearly gone through her repertoire of silly voices and settled on middle - period Maggie Smith. Her various "gels",some familiar,some not,have a shot at depicting their great-great grandmamas but are only too clearly products of their own time. As corny as Kansas in August,the various totally predictable plot lines develop inexorably until the viewer either bursts into tears or gives up and opens a box of chocolates.I chose the latter which cheered me up immensely and quite soon I was laughing in all the wrong places.Come to think of it,I doubt if there was a right place to laugh,"The Paradise" entirely lacks Miss Cookson's wry eye and takes itself v. seriously indeed. If it makes a second season I shall be writing a stern letter to the director general.
score 4/10
ianlouisiana 10 October 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2686273/ |
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28-1-2021 22:07:07