The Crow Girl

Thanks so much Slash for bringing this to the screen. Great cast, great swirling plot, superb blend of contemporary issues and man's inhumanity to man!

Love it when you suss some of the plot lines and get blindsided by others. Wife and I were so absorbed by the plot that we watched the lot over 2 nights. In fact it so drew us in that we almost didn't notice the soundtrack. Must have blended in so well. Will go back and listen out for it.

I'm sure some will criticise elements of the show but we loved the clever devices used.

There were elements of Silent Witness and Vera which is meant as praise indeed. If the next series builds on this wonderful beginning we will be in Paradise City!

I'm ok with a slow burn start as the characters aee introduced and the initial mystery is laid out . I'm ok with twists and turns as characters react to events and reveal their strengths, weaknesses and secrets.

I'm not ok with characters who do stupid things for plot reasons, especially in the last episode, which is an absolute mess and undermines much of the work done getting us there.

The Big reveal is largely telegraphed, but is one of the few things that makes any sense.

And of course the dreaded To Be Continued appeared as the screen faded to black.

I wont be holding my breath for season 2.

I watched 2 episodes and that was enough for me. It moves at glacial speed and isn't focused. Like an American police drama you get a lot of family drama thrown in which is distracting and worthless plus a demanding boss. I really don't care about DCI Kilburn's home situation. Why is a detective inspector the bagman for a detective chief inspector, normally a DCI has a sergeant. It's what I always enjoyed about the series "Vera", she rarely brought in any family stuff and her bosses let her do her job.

This is from a novel by Erik Axl Sund which is the pen name of two Swedish writers. Some Scandinavian novels should be dramatized like "The Killing" and "The Bridge", but I would have left "The Crow Girl" on the shelf.

Nice that it's set in Bristol and not London. I hated Dougray Scott in "Crime", but he's good in this series. I liked Eve Myles in "Torchwood".

This one is an exception for me. Usually, if I see a show or movie, that starts in a way, that suggests that we should know something about what's already happening (no matter how small those things are) and does not start with some flashback like "You must be wondering how I got here", and it's not a sequel - I drop those. Intention is clear: they want to show a "busy world", but more often than not that's just covering up bad writing, since neither the world nor the characters get a natural introduction. It may work in extremely rare cases, I guess, but I can't think of a good one.

The Crow Girl does it right, though. It feels completely natural, as if we are walking in on the characters going on about their days. The interactions that we see also do introduce the characters to us properly and, again, naturally. The introductions do not feel forced, and they are meaningful, starting to explore the relationships right from the start. This generally keeps up through the whole season, too, although quality does drop somewhat sometimes, but still the feeling of "natural" is preserved for the most part, which is really important for a crime series, especially when it's trying to be psychological, as well.

Until the ending happens. I won't spoil it, but the plot twist was shown in a way, that is only possible with because it's a visual medium. It's just the camera showing us 1 thing, when in reality it was another one. It felt like I was lied to, even though the twist itself does kind of make sense. I really wonder how this was handled in a book (probably just omitting descriptions at certain points), and I can get it, that it might have been difficult to do certain shots differently, but in general just obscuring the view would have worked much better, than this. Because of this, I can't give it more than 6/10.

What do you get if you take Eve Myles's Faith from Keeping Faith and Dougray Scott's DI Ray Lennox from Crime and send them to Bristol? You get The Crow Girl!

Maybe I am too cynical these days and Police shows have to have the smart talking main character detective who plays fast and loose, they put their work above all else including their family, then there needs to be the incompetent police sidekicks who have to be told to do everything, and the stern boss who berates the main character but relents when they see that the unconventional methods are working, so if you're into that then take a peek at this.

To be fair the wife liked it, I found it frustrating in the first episode but then it did get quite creepy in terms of the subject matter.

Ultimately it's OK in the grand scheme, you could do worse, like watching a Harlan Coban adaptation.