The Island

Beautifully shot, scripted and acted - a really fabulous and gripping 4 part series. Definitely worth watching. Warning - addictive and hard to watch only one episode at a sitting.

If you watch this you may feel sorry for the lack of joy emanating from some of the less effusive reviews . Each to their own of course - but if you enjoyed murder mystery series as a youngster, if you remember the early days of intrigue enjoying something like Agatha Christie, smiled at Bergerac or Inspector Morse - then this is the modern (better) equivalent.

Being shot in Gaelic and the subtitles adds something new and different to a non-Gaelic speaker and far from detracting, somehow adds authenticity and draws you in. Great watch. Well done the BBC for commissioning this.

This was such an exciting prospect - a flagship Gaelic drama, set in one of the most dramatic, atmospheric landscapes in the world, and told in the poetic and evocative Gaelic language. It should have been a game-changer but instead we got a series of creaking old cliches that would have been out-of-date 20 years ago.

As a murder-mystery it completely failed, with glaring plot holes and a laughably-inept police investigation.

The dialogue was just Daytime Soap-level melodrama translated into Gaelic. Out of four hours of dialogue there's literally zero quotable lines. There are also zero memorable characters because there's no character development. The dialogue is largely there to help grind out the plot, not to reveal any character depth, detail or colour.

The landscape shots are stunningly-beautiful but we can see amazing Hebridean landscape footage on youtube without having to sit through awful drama.

What's so frustrating about this show is that as the first big budget Gaelic drama, it should have been bulletproof, with a script stress-tested to destruction (especially a murder-mystery which requires meticulous plotting).

So much of the dreadful dialogue, tired tropes and plotting errors shouldn't have made it beyond the first draft. But they did, and because of that it will be a long time before another major Gaelic drama gets made, and that's a great shame.

I really wanted this drama to be a success but it was awful. I would have turned off earlier if it wasn't for the beautiful scenery and the false hope this drama would get better. The plot was full of holes and the police investigation was laughable with a comedy of errors. As a reviewer has said the lead character was miscast and the overall acting so cringeworthy. This had so much potential but it felt to me that they had a rough storyline that cried out to be developed, but instead crammed it into a 4 episode drama. Therefore, none of the characters had much substance to them and the drama was a wasted opportunity.

As this Gaelic language drama opens Sir Douglas McClean, one on the wealthiest men in Scotland, calls his children to tell them that in intruder has shot him and his wife. The police arrive at their castle on the Isle of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides, and find him wounded but his wife is dead. Officer Kat Crichton, who left the islands ten years previously is tasked with being the Family Liaison Officer. She assures her boss, DCI Ahmed Halim, that there won't be any problems returning to her old home... but it soon becomes apparent that she has crossed paths with the family before and has reasons to dislike them. As the story progresses we learn more about what is going on within the family and Kat's issues with them.

I thought this series was rather enjoyable. It might be looked at as 'Shetland with Subtitles' given its Scottish island setting. The central mystery is solid although having our protagonist having past problems with the victim's family felt a bit forced; the mystery could have been just as intriguing without it. The characters are solid enough and there are plenty of suspects... at the half way point I was unsure as to who would ultimately be revealed as the killer, or more importantly the motive. The Harris setting, with its rugged mountains, sea lochs and beautiful empty beaches was a delight; I'm sure the local tourist board will love their corner of the country being shown off! Overall I'd recommend this to fans of the genre looking for a new location for their murder mystery fix. I've no idea if more of this is planned but if it is I'd certainly watch.

These comments are based on watching the series in Gaelic with English subtitles.

Seems like an intriguing premise, but the lead actress is totally miscast. She looks like a scared high school student plus she can't act. She has only one facial expression, which is a childlike wide-eyed stare. It's also more than a bit strange how everybody switches between English and Gaelic as they speak. Perhaps this is real, but it makes watching it and reading subtitles rather challenging. Also, why is it that Brtish television wants so desperately to make lead characters gay? And they make a point of creating scenes where this is suddenly revealed through a same-sex kiss, as if to say to the audience, "aha, bet you didn't see that coming!" It's getting tired and old.