The Body Farm

I expected more from this BBC production. The acting was wooden and with so many off-point moments. A deaf character who needs to lip read, yet looking down or away when being spoken to, still fully grasping the dialogue. Fantastical leaps in forensic deduction with no supporting evidence. The scientists must be psychic as none of the evidence links up. So many stereotypes, the maverick policeman, the mad scientist off his meds and experimenting on himself, the feisty, femanist female scientist. Seriously. All in a backdrop of a dirty, run-down farmhouse turned laboratory/body farm. None of the scientific findings would be valid due to cross-contamination from the dirt and people living and eating in the labs. Truly toe-curlingly bad.

It started badly but became quite compelling towards the end. Implausible in parts, with strange amateurish scientists and a lone detective inspector investigating a crime that would have had the book thrown at it in real life. Contrived characters. But an interesting plot and some good ideas. I shall watch the second episode before deciding whether it's worth it. My son was less impressed and I don't think he'll bother watching any more. As for me, I'm interested to see whether the cardboard cutout characters get fleshed out a bit in subsequent episodes. The quality of the plot is high, the script doesn't do it justice and the jerky direction left me cold in places, but still I watched it to the end so they must have something right.

With the cold case squad disbanded, Doctor Eve Lockhart takes up a new role, continuing the work on her body farm.

For me, Waking the dead is one of, if not the best of The Detective shows, it's now a good few years since it ended, and it still packs a punch, time has been kind to it, I always thought this would be an extension of that great show, it isn't.

It's decent, and definitely worth a look, but it's just a bit off, Eve feels like a whole new character, in Waking the dead, she was quirky, the outsider, here she's very much part of the main crowd, Oggy fulfils the quirky role, she's just lost something, not that I'm taking away anything from Tara Fitzgerald, her acting as always is spot on.

Episode four is particularly good, it does stand out, some of the others unfortunately, are just uninteresting.

I didn't particularly like Hale, he's no Peter Boyd, nor should he be, but Allen just didn't feel right in the part, he's a much better villain. Wunmi Mosaku was wasted here, her character was a little blank.

It doesn't surprise me that it only lasted a single series, it could, and should have been so much better.

6/10.

I have seen this series twice now (on DVD and recently on ABC1 in Australia) and am still not sure about it. The plots are good and the main characters potentially interesting, but somehow it fails to grab me. I agree with other reviewers that the monologues at start and end are a real turnoff, if the chief scientist really feels like that then she is in the wrong business - she is far too philosophical to be 'scientific' in her research. On the subject of 'research' why bother to set their base in a 'body farm' when the work they allegedly do there is completely ignored. My understanding of 'body farms' - at least the FBI one - is that they study rates and levels of decomposition (under different circumstances - heat, moisture, body fat level etc) to allow some parameters to be applied to 'fresh' cases. Part from Oggie communing with one of the corpses propped up against a tree the farm 'product' gets little attention. Most of what they do is basic crime scene investigation (DNA, bugs etc) which has been seen so often before in CSI, Bones...... If this series wants a niche it needs a handle - and it hasn't got one based on this first series. Surprisingly, with Trevor Eve as executive producer, it lacks the bite which was the mark of 'Waking The Dead'. Perhaps he should act in his own show as he was the essential pivot in 'WTD'. A second series? - would be good if they fixed the problems but perhaps the problems in Series One (and viewer disappointment) will prevent it. A good idea poorly executed.

...mostly because it had promise.

Pluses: --the actors: most of them are well-known and their performance history is pretty good, overall.

That's pretty much it for the pluses.

The minuses: --the scripts: formulaic, a patchwork of elements from other (better) series, laden with cliches; most of the episodes telegraph the solution well before the conclusions.

--the characters: no matter how good the actors, there's only so much they can do with two-dimensional characters, for example, Hale, the "angry" cop... Oggy, the quirky oddball...

the direction: elementary, amateurish; again, there may be only so much a director can do with weak scripts, but they should be able to give the actors some guidance. Directing doesn't show here. It looks more as if the actors were left to their own devices.

--the setting: the idea of a body farm is not in itself a problem. I don't know if there is such a place in the UK, but I know of at least one in the US. The problem with this particular setting is it's dirty. The "house" has paint peeling from the walls, clutter everywhere, from dirty dishes to wadded clothing to open shelving with who-knows-what. The "mortuary" is separated from the live-in area by a plastic curtain. Hardly ideal for a forensics lab.

Even worse, technical aspects of investigation and analysis are sorely lacking. A character says "Suit up" as the team prepares to enter a crime scene, only to show them dressed in paper booties and plastic gloves, and nothing else. Hairnets? Masks? Full-cover suits? Nah, why bother. If cross-contamination doesn't happen at the scene itself, it surely will back in the lab, where they lean over bodies, dropping hair, skin cells, their own DNA, whatever.

A real shame that the production team wasted the budget and some decent actors on this piece of drivel. As I said, I gave it four stars because it had potential. Sadly, that potential dwindled as of the first episode, and was never recovered.