Watched 20 minutes - that was quite enough.

wilsr

I was looking forward to this after a friend recommended it during a phone call today.
It's apparently quite a complicated plotline - which I usually enjoy - but I am afraid I only watched the first twenty minutes or so before switching off. I just could not take any more.
The problem is the usual BBC sound engineering - but in spades.
Several of the actors' accents would be difficult enough to follow even with perfect sound, but the latter is not there. The volume changes dramatically often from shot to shot: when I say "dramatically" I mean it goes from quiet to so loud the viewer is deafened. On my TV from about 18 to over 60 on the volume setting.
This is compounded by a track that is frankly amateurish. Most scenes have background music - it seems the children can't watch anything without it - which bears no relevance to the story. On many occasions it becomes so loud that the dialogue is drowned out and I was left wondering just what had transpired.
Sorry I cannot make any observations as to the story: even the twenty minutes I suffered was spent frantically turning the volume up and down just in time to have to go the opposite way.
If this is the best that modern TV sound engineers can do I will have to go back to silent movies. It's that dire.

score 1/10

wilsr 18 September 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6103908/