Poisoned Ivy

Lejink

Heaven knows there are any number of true life stories all over the world of young children being kidnapped at a young age and held prisoner by their deranged captors that a drama on the subject is always going to seem topical. However, this five-part BBC series just didn't convey any sense of realism and threw far too many left-field plot developments to inspire any credibility in either the situation or the characters depicted.

Where to start with those then? Just why did the escaped Ivy's younger sister ever doubt who she was when no one else had even the remotest suspicion? Would her then thirteen year old boyfriend, now obviously grown-up, married and running a pub with his wife, really be so hung up on Ivy that he almost rejects his wife for her, especially when Ivy's mood-swings seem to veer exclusively from child-like to zombie-fied. Would her long separated mum and dad really try to pretend all was right as rain at home to the extent where the husband breaks up with his younger girlfriend. And would even the most crazed kidnapper really imprison another young girl to act purely as bait for him to get Ivy back with him in a highly improbable abduction scene at a shopping mall in front of about a dozen watching plain-clothes police?

Enough already. Don't even start me on the interchangeable good-cop, bad-cop boyfriend - girlfriend CID officers in the most unconvincing relationship you could imagine or the pathetic ex-school head who's never gotten over a brief affair with the mother. In short, none of the characters seemed remotely real, the plotting unconvincing and implausible and really a very ordinary group of actors putting it across without any depth or nuance. The rushed, supposedly dramatic climax likewise failed to either convince or excite, plus there was a pointless life or death situation for the cynical go-getting woman detective which also fell flat.

Complete with one of those irritating but apparently obligatory wonky-indie theme tunes so beloved of TV producers today, this series was a real long haul where not much happened and what did seemed contrived in the extreme. After recent successes in gritty contemporary dramas like "Line Of Duty" and "Happy Valley" this was a big disappointment all round and unsatisfactory viewing to my eyes.

score 3/10

Lejink 26 May 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3476700/