wordcraft

It is some time since my last IMDB review, but I was galvanised into action by the many shortcomings of this piece. Not for a long while have I witnessed such a sad waste of acting talent and production values in so wooden, lifeless, directionless (and basically I think the American director is most to blame, even if the British stars cynically dialled it in for the Netflix audience), and utterly bland an example of TV drama.

The book on which it is based was admittedly lightweight holiday reading, but at least Osman had a sure-footed nimbleness in his writing that was totally absent on screen, as several box office names went through the motions without the slightest sign of interest in what they were doing. Amazingly, for something so light, it did not even have the redeeming self-irony of other frothy "cosy mystery" series such as Midsomer Murders or Death in Paradise to relieve the tedium, with the possible exception of Helen Mirren and Jonathan Pryce tossing in a rather obvious gag about Mirren's roles as Queen Elizabeth and Pryce's playing of Prince Philip in The Crown.

Aside from feeling I'd thrown away two hours on nothing very much, my main takeaway of seeing Mirren, Brosnan, Pryce, Richard E. Grant, David Tennant, a barely recognisable Paul Freeman, and other stalwarts looking totally lost and bored was a recollection of an old, old joke about a man - a devoted rock music fan - who died and found himself in the afterlife. He saw to his delight that he was surrounded by all his favourite artists, the soundtrack of his life, carrying their instruments and preparing to set up for a concert. This must be Heaven, he thought, until it dawned on him that Jimi, Janis, Bowie, Buddy Holly, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, and countless others were playing... Y Viva Espana.

There's nothing intrinsically WRONG with this series. The cast is pretty good, and Nicola Walker improves most everything she takes part in, but I'm surprised nobody has observed now eerily similar it is in feel to RTE's "Striking Out" (2017).

That is a story set in a very glossy Dublin, featuring Amy Huberman and Neil Morrissey, with a female solicitor who defiantly breaks away from the "family firm" (check, in Huberman's case the in-laws' firm), a sequence of family law cases that often mirror the protagonists' own messy lives (check), steroidal dysfunctional families (check), rather oversexed and unrealistically attractive colleagues galore (check), lots of heavy drinking in chic bars (check), shiny glass and steel office milieus (check), big panning Tourist Authority shots of throbbing metropolis as character stands - deep in thought - on office's rooftop terrace (check), strong but troubled female lead (check), and so on and so on.

One might even have imagined Abi Morgan taking surreptitious notes at a brainstorming session for the earlier drama, but perhaps there simply is a limited number of legal practice storylines out there. A pity.

One or other of John Cleese's former spouses has done the arts a grave misservice by milking him of his earnings from the days when he was a genuinely funny man. He ought to have been able to swan off into the sunlit uplands of a well-earned retirement some several years/decades ago, but sadly he apparently cannot afford this luxury, and so must ply his trade long after he has ceased to amuse us, except perhaps in vintage clips of yesteryear. He does absolutely nothing to redeem this dire sitcom, but in fairness it was already so grindingly bad you feel that even if he were NOT well past his screen sell-by date and had turned in an epic performance, it would still have been embarrassingly awful. Since I am allegedly in the demographic to which this dross was pitched, I can only wince at what younger eyes and ears would make of it. Steer well clear, cast manoeuvring with extreme difficulty. Worst thing I have seen in many a year. It even made me log in and post this - it was THAT ghastly.