Could have been so much better

judithtesta

This COULD have been an excellent police procedural, if the writer hadn't insisted on including the messy and either irrelevant or repulsive personal lives of the police personnel.

The Bobby Day character: a revolting-looking apoplectic type with a blotchy red face, constantly trembling, always on the verge of exploding, and of course his face is shown in endless close-ups.

Then there's the person he (incredibly!) falls for: a spectacularly ugly woman with a million wrinkles, a huge nose, and long, phony-blonde hair. She also has the kind of interfering, pseudo-profound manner that makes you want to slap her and tell her to shut up and get lost.

The Nina Suresh character: the talents of a fine actress are wasted on this hopeless creature. If a man wanted to create a character who embodies every anti-feminist cliché...well, a man DID create this character: a 38-year-old woman who plays at being a tough police detective while her real obsession to get married, have a baby and quit working forever. (She actually SAYS these things!) Nina is one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen in any drama.

Her young male partner: maybe the fact that this character is played by an openly gay actor has something to do with the complete lack of chemistry between him and Nina, despite the supposed attraction between them. Or maybe it's just bad writing. He comes across as inhibited and overly, unbelievably noble. The whole sub-plot with his crazy (and also terminally annoying) mother is irrelevant. And no young man in his right mind would behave as he does in the end.

The German detectives-- the Linda Felber character and her partner: many educated Germans speak fluent English, but what are the chances that TWO of them happen to be working together on this case? Noreason why we need to know that the male partner, Walti, is gay, and just as little reason for us to see that Linda has a stay-at-home husband and four little kids, and that she and her husband don't have much of a sex life any longer. Who cares?

If there weren't so much personal drama getting in the way, the series could have been 5 or 6 crisp, tightly written episodes, instead of being dragged out to eight. By the end, I didn't even care who the murderer was-- I was just glad to get out of the company of all these dismal, unlikely couples.

score 3/10

judithtesta 26 November 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3586929/