Strangers

Slow start but good acting & seems to be speeding up now. Shame about some of the technical details, for instance, the voice message left for Jonah by his wife being altered by the HK police. Voice messages are not stored on the phone, they are saved on the network providers servers, to delete a message would be simple, but to edit a message would be impossible as the HK police would need direct access to a UK network server, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

If ever a series got huge advertising, this was it, Cinema, TV, online, wherever you looked, it was visible. For good reason, it was clearly big budget drama.

It starts off well, the first few episodes are intriguing, good characters, and a deep level of intrigue. Sadly, because it's an eight part serial, there comes a midpoint lull, and it does suffer from being padded. Plenty of scenes of Jonah walking through the streets of Hong Kong doing very little.

Fortunately from episode six onwards, the show gains real momentum, and truly delivers some excellent moments.

I love the Hong Kong setting, the buildings are incredible, and it's nice to see something a little different. John Simm is superb throughout, supported well by Tim McInnerny, Emilia Fox, and Anthony Hayes in particular.

In summary, great location work, plenty of intrigue, but it does suffer from being too long. 8/10

A quiet thriller, reminded me of Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Lots of threads gently woven together. Mistakes made by the characters added to the story. An ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The David Chen character gentle desperate and sad to understand Megan, his whole life turned upside down by her death and the appearance of an englishman. A daughter who never really knew her Mother who had loved her but hidden so much from her Chinese family.

John Simm is such a good actor because like all really good actors his acting is invisible. Without him this might not have been so satisfying. (Emilia Fox is easy on the eye but let's face it her acting is barely passable.) Many other reviews complain about the lack of pace but I found it just fine and the plotting and overall writing was good. The series captured the claustrophobia of Hong Kong, Kowloon and Macau very well which gave the series lots of atmosphere. Because I'd skimmed a couple of reviews prior to watching the series I expected the last episode to be a disappointment but to the contrary I found the wrap up to be totally satisfying. And it's all worth it for John Simm.

I liked this show and found it captivating. The writing was lacking at times and like another reviewer felt the handing over of cell phone in scene 2 was not realistic and far fetched. This show has the potential, with better writing, to be really good.