North Sea Connection

If you have never watched a Scandinavian Nordic Noir crime drama and maybe put off by the subtitles, then I would recommend North Sea Connection as a good place to start as 90% of the dialogue is in English.

Set in a small fishing village on the west coast of Ireland, a Swedish detective teams up with the local Garde officer as she believes drugs are being transported via fishing boats from Sweden to Ireland.

As well as this being the main storyline there are several sub plots along the way. Sinead Cusack is just about convincing as the only female trawler woman in the village, and the rest of the cast all give solid performances. Without spoilers I can safely say there will definitely be a second season! 7/10.

I was thoroughly enjoying the North Sea connection. The story line was fascinating with the inclusion of a number of details tha I do not recall having been used in other TV dramas. Most notable of these was the drug transporting in ice. I do wonder if that method has ever been actually used in the real world, maybe it will be now. I enjoyed it though only as far as near the end of episode six, when it became clear that there were so many loose ends that it could not possibly end there. There seems to be some talk of series two but nothing definite has been stated by BBC. However if series two does not happen I will consider that I completely wasted my time watching series.

This is the biggest pile of garbage to grace our screens .bad acting.bad accents.bad language.the cinematography is zero. Renvyle is a beautiful part of Connemara and we,ve seen none of that yet.only a depressing warehouse.a manky plot that a Dublin land lived in.dissing Dubliners .and the pier.where is it going.nowhere.its a dispicable dipiction of the beautiful west coast of ireland.it makes my blood boil as I live here .romanticising drug smuggling... no actual Irish actors eventhough we have plenty to choose from.father Ted was banned from our screens and we are paying to watch this pooh.💩

OK, actors were pretty good. Especially the main actress. The Lenny character was overplayed. THe other females were somewhat forgettable.

The main gang leader was somewhat typical, nasty but so erudite.

I had trouble with the main male actor who owned the fish plant. He was the spitting image of the singer Michael Buble and that made it hard for me to accept him as real. I kept expecting him to sing.

Story was pretty good. Well paced. But the ending was cut short and we were left to guess how things concluded. It was as if there was another Series in the works and we would have to watch it to find out how everyone fared. In future. That was the worst part of the Series.

One thing that bothers me is that so many of these Irish productions are all crime based, violent and gritty, often with ties to the IRA history. It leave me with a desire to NOT visit Ireland in future. It all seems so bleak, not withstand that the countryside and ocen views are often lovely.

Finally, I woder how many drug smugglers will look to this movie as a guide to hiding drugs? The method of hiding them for transportation was very sneaky.

This is a six-episode series that leaves most of the story lines open.

I had very much enjoyed it, up until then. I don't know the west of Ireland, but it certainly felt authentic. Though there did seem rather a lot of outsiders.

A series of twists and turns in the plot.

And hardly a spoiler to say that people who get involved in drug smuggling find out that things quickly run out of control.

It was developing nicely. But Episode Six ends with most of the crucial plot-lines still open. I assume a second series is planned, but then have also short-changed their audience.

I reduced my score from 8 to 4, because no one should do that to their audience.