The Outsiders

Oh dear. Britain's main commercial channel, ITV, have yet again thrown a load of money at another star vehicle that has gone down in hilarious flames. Ex-Eastender Nigel Harman (good look, shame about the voice) stars as an ex-spy now running a lobster restaurant who is re-recruited by his shadowy former employers to steal a painting that's got some kind of formula on it (the usual kind you can only see under ultraviolet light). Brian Cox texts in his performance as the head of the agency - clearly all his scenes were shot in one day as he probably needed a new kitchen or something.

What else is there to say? It's badly made, clumsily written, flatly directed trash. ITV are clearly testing this out to see if they can get a series which, trust me, they shouldn't. ITV need to take a page out of the Beeb's books and stop making crap star vehicles and develop ideas into decent scripts and THEN hire the actors.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Nathan Hyde (Nigel Harman) is ekking out a quiet existence in a remote seaside location as a chef, until he starts talking to an attractive woman in the restaurant. One thing leads to another and they end up in bed- but the woman has been a little devious and before he knows it he's taken hostage by helicopter. It's here we learn that Nathan has a bit of an extraordinary past, as an expert evasion expert. Now an organisation known as The Establishment want him to sneak into an island and retrieve a stolen painting. Nathan's doubts are removed when his daughter's safety comes to rest on it...

Long running British soap opera East Enders has never been renowned for it's stellar acting and has yet to produce a Sean Bean or Ben Kingsley. But that doesn't stop some of it's stars, such as hunky Nigel Harman, from trying to avoid disappearing into the realms of panto land forever and so we have The Outsiders, a distracting but totally unmemorable and rather corny take on the spy/world-wide mega-lomaniac premise. The writer is obviously a fan of the sort of spy thrillers that were about a lot in the 60s and the whole idea seems to have been lifted from one that I don't know the name of (it was spoofed on The Simpsons once!) But in trying to make it appeal to a more modern audience, this ITV production has just managed a campy retro feel rather than a trendy new one. **

The Outsiders was actually better than i thought it would be although there was room for some improvement. It was an entertaining 90 minutes and the producers certainly made the Mersey locations believably foreign. The whole premise of Nigel Harman playing a retired 'agent' for Minus 12 was well handled and made for a good start to the story as we picked up on what was going on. I think there is definitely room for a series out of this, but hopefully the producers will drop some of the daft effects that hurt the overall feel of The Outsiders. The wholly unconvincing table based viewing screen and naff looking underground complex for Minus 12 to start with! Overall it was well worth watching and I do hope we get to see more...

Where do ITV get their script writers from? this could have been an amazing programme! you have Nigel Harman who's brooding good looks and athleticism could have been put to much better use,Brian Cox who is an amazing actor and who can be incredibly menacing when he needs to be, Colin Salmon who can cut a presence in pretty much any scene, and what did you get? dated, boring, drivel....... I haven't got a problem with ITV trying their "star" vehicles, but for pity's sake, use these people as actors rather than purely faces.

The amount of clichés in this - wife dead, daughter unavailable, dying twin sister, eternal life formula blah blah blah - just went to prove that - and I hate to say this being a brit - the Americans do this kind of drama so much better, where were the fight scenes? (counted a couple, not enough for an hour and a half), the graphics when Nathan was hanging out of the helicopter were terrible, and that stupid woman who played his partner? oh please!!!!!!!!!!! Not impressed,not impressed at all, in fact, my boyfriend was so bored by it he went to sleep!!

When looking at trailers for this ITV Drama it was clearly an attempt at turning Nigel Harman (yet another ex-soap star jumping to ITV) into a Jason Bourne like character. Hell, it even had Brian Cox in it! I thought I'd give it a go. How bad could it be I thought...

But within 5 minutes of watching the programme it was clear that Jason Bourne wasn't the writer's only influence. As noted by others The Da Vinci Code was one of them. The list of rips-offs....or homages continued with Out Of Sight (and Don't Look Now), Alias, the list seemed to go on and on.

It's okay to be like another film or TV show, but at least try to do something different.

The Outsiders was a mess, the plot was all over the place, the characters were two dimensional and totally in-consistent. One minute Anna Madeley our attractive female lead seemed to be in total control of the situation, the next she was the new girl at the office wa-a-a-y in over her head....

The villains weren't anything special.

The few action set pieces were fumbled by the director.

Dialogue was turgid.

The tone was all over the place, was it meant to be a bit tongue in cheek or was it meant to be a down and dirty action thriller? It wasn't either.

It was a below average Sunday tea-time show put in a post-watershed time slot for no good reason.

Even the shows title made no sense.

The real annoyance was that only a few days ago ITV1 broadcast a new one-off special of Cracker. Which was 2 hours of TV gold. Proof that ITV can still (occasionally) do good drama.

In a world where shows like 24, CSI and The Shield exist there isn't any excuse for shows like The Outsiders to reach our screens.

I very much doubt it'll be turned into a full series, but if it does it really needs some re-tooling. Getting new writers would be job one.

Avoid, avoid, avoid. Instead put on the DVD of one of the Bourne films.