The Island

As someone said before, the lead acress is a miscast. Totally wrong for the role and makes everything else completely unbelievable. The lead actress is so wrong as a police and has the same confused and scared expression all the time.

Plot doesn't hold up and by episode 4 you never really care anymore.

With a better cast and a better script it might had a chance to be good but now it is just off.

It is boing and boring.

It's a no from me and I am Sorry to say that I do not recommend it...

I give it 4 stars because of the interesting and beautiful scenery and the gaelic languange being used.

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.

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 is a rare flop in the otherwise dependable genre of 'tartan noir' police procedurals.

At first glance, it wound appear to have all the right ingredients of a satisfying spiel in the mould of 'Shetland'. The addition of Gaelic dialogue is an intriguing touch.

Unfortunately, the whole production is a major disappointment. The story is implausible, beset with tropes and cliches you'll have seen a hundred times before. The script is mechanistic, the characters boring and the acting wooden.

Even on catch-up, with the ability to recap the action (such as there is), the story is disjointed, confused and exhausting to follow. The editing in particular is a frantic machine-gun barrage of shots that make it impossible to keep up with the subtitles for the split-second they appear on screen. The frequent switches between English and Gaelic in the same conversation are an added struggle to follow.

Despite the copious drone footage, there is no sense whatsoever of place and we learn nothing about the unidentified locations we are flying over.

None of these criticisms would necessarily be a problem on their own, but taken together they add up to a series that is more effort than enjoyment and ultimately difficult to recommend.

What's most disappointing about this series is the lack of ambition. They tried to do a mash-up of 'Scandi Noir' and old Bergerac-style shows and ended up with neither, instead of making something fresh with its own identity, based on the unique language and environment.

Scandi Noir worked brilliantly because it wasn't trying to copy another genre. It also worked brilliantly because it was (mostly) based on excellent, successful novels, so they were already building on a strong foundation.

This series is based on an 'amateur dramatics' script which borrows from tired old shows that went off-air years ago. Scandi Noir also had tight, expert plotting, not the rambling, error-strewn 'first draft' feel of this effort.

There's no attempt to capture the pitch-black Highland Scottish humour that people - especially police - use to cope with grimness and tragedy. That would at least have given it some believability, some character and would also have distinguished it from the generic old shows it's trying (and failing) to copy.

While many detective shows have a humourless intensity, that can work brilliantly if you have compelling dialogue and a taught, intense script, whereas this is just everybody glowering and sighing and delivering cliches that sound overwrought and hammy.

I hope the next Gaelic drama tries to make something unique and original. You don't need a million quid an episode, just a decent script and the passion to make something that stands on its own, not a bad version of other old genres.