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All that time and effort pulling together a great cast. The acting would be exceptional, if more of the characters were believable. The Beeb (and others) now seemed trapped in a formulaic approach to drama, where nothing must be too complicated because the public are a bit thick, right? And of course we have the storyline trying to establish itself while tripping over an obsession with quickly letting the world know that the BBC is committed to positive imaging and minority inclusiveness. All very laudable, but the UK is a messy imperfect place, thus you might be looking at a parallel universe. The result is a world that doesn't feel real, a fairytale version of London in a story populated by too many characters that seem false or clumsily constructed media versions - shallow cliches and are exactly not at all mirrors to the people who hold these jobs in the actual London. If you want to do a political drama, then you need people to think that it could really happen. But from prison riot and druggy daughter to the special advisers sleeping with each other, everything is just too convenient and contrived.Overdone. Artificial, yes, it feels artificial like a bad sales pitch in a car dealers, full of exaggeration and false empathy. Forget covid, BBC drama seems to have caught a bad case of Netflix. It's not clever, it's not scary, it's not funny. It's certainly not House of Cards. It's a bit like picking up a new John le Carre book, only to discover he's switched to writing teen fiction.
score 4/10
JohnLondon-03818 21 October 2020
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6193203/ |
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1-11-2020 20:25:05