La reunion

Back and forwards all the time with irritating parts played by the young counterparts of the main characters and dramatic music score like in a B movie. I was immediately put off at the start by the terrible casting of Ioan's parents namely Rupert Graves and Dervla Kirwan. Considering Rupert is ten years older, Dervla a mere two years older than Ioan I initially thought oh they must be playing his brother and sister in law but no. They even gave Dervla a grey rinse to make her seem more authentic. They should have cast actors in their late 60s or 70s not two actors who are in their fifties. So the whole thing is ridiculous from that point as well as the daft plot. The only thing going for it is the scenery.

Must have cost a lot of money to produce this series judged by set location and number of episodes. But I challenge anyone to actually care what happened to Vinca? By episode 3 haven't we all had enough of these snatched incomplete conversations where characters drop a bombshell of a line and they just walk off or drive off in their posh French car without being challenged as to explain further about what they have just said. Vinca just skips around in flashbacks in a most irritating way and that is another reason not to care what happened to her. In fact non of the characters are likeable with the exception of Manon. Not really worked out what ,if anything, her being pregnant adds to the storyline? Wouldn't have started watching it had I known the extent to which subtitles are used.

Scenery and actors should have been a formula for success, unfortunately it didn't gel. From the disjointed beginning this looked like an bad mix--maybe they changed the script and directors every 20 minutes as a "new wave" in episodic drama. It felt like an editor came in with scissors and clipped all the good parts out.

The jumpy narrative only became more complicated as the story unfolded. I wish they'd have had a narrator dubbed in order to make sense of the action.

If you choose to waste your time here, try turning off the sound and guess the timeline of the action--it will be the only way you can justify your hours.

This was a 5/10 for me. The series generally seemed poorly made - infantile, even. The characters were all too often one-dimensional, the script was banal, and the storyline veered all over the place. The plot seemed more & more dramatic the longer the series went on - and not in the right way. It became more overwrought & less in control, the more episodes appeared. Keyed up in a bad way. Which was a shame, as the basic plot - the premise of the tale - is very intriguing.

I HAD - at the end of the first episode - been very drawn to the basic plotline. At that point I had thought I might at the end be giving the drama a 7 or 8 out of 10, if it continued at the standard I was seeing. But by the third episode my rating had dropped to a sad 6. And thereafter down to a 5. Such a shame. Maybe I will have to get a copy of the book from which the drama was adapted, & try that instead . . . It's by a best-selling author. It's such a tragedy to see a novel badly represented on screen.

It didn't help that the lead - Ioan Gruffudd - had cast as his parents, two British stalwarts in the acting world that I already knew/guessed were only a few years older than Gruffudd: the two actors looked much the same age as their on-screen 'son'! It was peculiarly disconcerting to watch. (Silver hair does NOT an old face make!) When I checked the two actors' actual age at IMDb, I found I was right: the 'mother' is only 2 years older that her 'son'! And even the 'father' actor is only older than Gruffudd by 10 years. This lack of careful casting was irritating: their ages made the interaction between the three 'family members'/actors seem unbelievable; even grotesque.

It seemed lazy, on the part of the production team, to give these two specific actors these roles, when they looked more like their 'son's' sister and brother! When laziness in casting comes into play like this, it is fairly certain that indolence will run into other aspects of the production . . . Which it did.

The lack of continuity between the scenes smacked of amateurism. Disconnected scenes were confusing. 'Ta-da!' moments didn't ring true. Information was missing that was required by a new viewer - a fatal storytelling flaw for viewers who don't already know key details of the plot. There was little explanation as to the motivation, of several characters, for their actions. At times the series seemed to have been written by 14-year-olds (. . . No offence intended to 14-year-olds!).

High dramatic ploys - such as evil Russian gangsters - were suddenly brought in & with no subtlety. Over-lingering by the camera on players' faces often made the programme feel more like a soap opera than a carefully put together prime-time drama. Little nuance was deployed at any time. Nearly all of the characters were only thinly developed, if at all.

This was a case of good actors wasting their talent in a poorly put together production.

Not even some good combined factors and craft work - the presence of several good players, clever camera shots, great scenery, and the lead (Gruffudd) doing a super job with the material he had - could make me enjoy this poor production. :-(

I finally realised I wanted to end my association at the end of the fourth episode, but had in fact already nigh-on tuned out during the previous episode. So I had deduced all the shortcomings & over-exaggeration of the production by the end of episode 4. That's two-thirds of the whole story to make me realise that, sadly, this is one of the few miniseries I just didn't want (read: couldn't bear!) to waste any more of my time on . . .

Even for a series of just 6 episodes, it wasn't worth the hours I'd spend watching the programme to the end.

But . . . I chose to persist in watching all of the 6 episodes. I just felt I had to commit to it, come what may. But, that being said, watching the last 2 episodes took me a hiatus of, first, a month, till I watched episode 5, then another month till I watched the last episode. That is, I had to stop watching the series for weeks, because dragging myself through each episode quite literally felt like my teeth were being pulled.

The only relief, after that last 4-week holiday, was finding that so much was explained in the last episode. This meant that the over-stylised melodramatic approach to the drama was almost lost amidst all the bare facts of the story. What joy! ,-)

So at least the solution of getting to the all-important final facts of the story - who did it, what exactly, & why?! - was relatively painless to live through.

But the overall sensation I got from the series was an inflated sense of self-worth by the production team. A preposterous style ruining a good story. An overwrought drama does not result in a GOOD TV drama. And this was several hours of my life I would like to have back!

The essence of the story - a team of friends, a conjoined educational setting in their past, secrets and lies, and its retro-leaning plot - reminded me rather of an excellent novel I read years ago: 'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt. What a shame someone hasn't set THAT in celluloid, yet! . . . Pass it on, someone . . . !

This looked promising, the cast are fantastic actors, the location is simply stunning and premise decent. After a couple of episodes, the whole thing starts to creek, the storyline becomes confused and strange. Then, episode by episode it gets worse until it's almost farcicle. Essentially it was an awful script, strange storyline and frankly unbelievable characters. Some of the storyline is just strange - not in a Donny Darko 'really makes you think' way, more of a 'what the heck was that about, humans don' t behave like that' way. What a waste of such excellent acting talent, who do their best to prop this up, but fail under the weight of such a poor story.