Laight

With Martin Clunes in the lead, an excellent supporting cast, and solid direction you might expect a good show. You don't get it. There are two major problems. The first is the most important: the actual case that this show is based on just isn't a very interesting one -- a basic murder investigation without a bit of suspense or depth. The other issue is the slight attempt to bring the lead detective's personal life into the show, but that goes nowhere, in an odd, flat way. There's even a weak attempt to create suspense among the detectives, but the show seems to forget they've planted the seeds of a possible issue. All in all, a disappointment.

It's almost unbelievable that the characters in this show are portrayed as adults. There are three grown-up children, and each one is more unbelievable than the next. Decisions can't be made, relationships are impossible, just getting through the day seems more than each can handle.

Also unbelievable is the thin plot line, which is so threadbare that there's no question in the first episode what will happen in the next three.

Still more unbelievable is that the actors in this show agreed to participate in it. They're all talented, have proven themselves in other shows, and a few, such as Imelda Staunton, are actually better than just talented.

The most unbelievable part of this show is that given the impossibly silly script, that it got made at all. It's that weak.

(Actually, perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of the show is that, apparently, every day at the south coast of England the sun is always shining, few clouds dot the sky, and the day is always perfect. Because we all know that England has the best weather in the world.)

Perhaps it's just best to believe that this show never happened.

It's almost impossible to believe these Mitford sisters existed. A great novelist, an influential communist and non-fiction writer, a Hitler-lover an confidant, a leader of the English fascist movement, an elegant and influential duchess, and, a lesbian expert on hens (that last one is slightly arguable). All these women came from a highly unremarkable aristocratic family that should have just given the world a flock of vapid debutantes and uninformed Tories.

This show manages to capture all of that (up to a certain timeline -- there are hints that the show will continue), mostly through excellent acting by all the sisters as well as the parents and the sisters' partners, especially Josh Sasse as the truly revolting Oswald Mosley. The script is both funny and poignant. The direction is clean and crisp. There's some stretching of the truth for the sake of the plot, and occasional bloopers but still, this is a show unlike any other, one that if it weren't based on actual events, you'd say was way too insane to be realistic.