The Body Farm

I expected more from this BBC production. The acting was wooden and with so many off-point moments. A deaf character who needs to lip read, yet looking down or away when being spoken to, still fully grasping the dialogue. Fantastical leaps in forensic deduction with no supporting evidence. The scientists must be psychic as none of the evidence links up. So many stereotypes, the maverick policeman, the mad scientist off his meds and experimenting on himself, the feisty, femanist female scientist. Seriously. All in a backdrop of a dirty, run-down farmhouse turned laboratory/body farm. None of the scientific findings would be valid due to cross-contamination from the dirt and people living and eating in the labs. Truly toe-curlingly bad.

It started badly but became quite compelling towards the end. Implausible in parts, with strange amateurish scientists and a lone detective inspector investigating a crime that would have had the book thrown at it in real life. Contrived characters. But an interesting plot and some good ideas. I shall watch the second episode before deciding whether it's worth it. My son was less impressed and I don't think he'll bother watching any more. As for me, I'm interested to see whether the cardboard cutout characters get fleshed out a bit in subsequent episodes. The quality of the plot is high, the script doesn't do it justice and the jerky direction left me cold in places, but still I watched it to the end so they must have something right.

as a spin off from "waking the dead" simply one of the best and consistent BBC dramas ever i was expecting this to be somewhat better. clearly not by the same team that wrote waking the dead, this is a good idea for a series but poorly executed.

the episode plots are sound in principle, but the body farm scientists are supposed to be just that, scientists - so why are they doing interviews, involved with arrests etc? And the science is hardly integral to the episodes - we start off with a hook, but the rest of the episode involves lots of contrived and implausible police work by a lone detective, interviewing everyone either at the body farm or in public, backed up by moralistic team of clichéd scientists, who love to talk about what is right and wrong and throwing opinions (not scientific facts) around and who spend very little time doing what they might be expected to do, (a couple of DNA samples here and there, a couple of hairs found here and there), but what about the body farm itself, where we might expect that some of the research there might play a part in the unfolding episodes. well the body farm barely gets a mention, and plays little part in the science or plot unfolding.

there's little evidence to suggest this will be picked up for a second series!

I eagerly awaited this spin off from Waking the Dead but was sadly disappointed. It nearly succeeds and hopefully they will commission a second series to right the wrongs as it is a very good idea and the cast are excellent. They should ditch the voice over at beginning and end - they made little sense and were just annoying. They should move the street hunt for the criminal a little further back and make us care about the characters by giving them considerably more flesh on the bone. I watched 6 episodes and I couldn't tell you the name of Eve's number 2. Or indeed if he is number 2 - he could be her boss for all we know.

Concentrate on the Body farm more - the 5th episode really picked up with good forensics on the burned body - the stories are good but seemed rushed - perhaps an hour is not enough if they were to let us into the lives and interactions of the Body Farmers.

...mostly because it had promise.

Pluses: --the actors: most of them are well-known and their performance history is pretty good, overall.

That's pretty much it for the pluses.

The minuses: --the scripts: formulaic, a patchwork of elements from other (better) series, laden with cliches; most of the episodes telegraph the solution well before the conclusions.

--the characters: no matter how good the actors, there's only so much they can do with two-dimensional characters, for example, Hale, the "angry" cop... Oggy, the quirky oddball...

the direction: elementary, amateurish; again, there may be only so much a director can do with weak scripts, but they should be able to give the actors some guidance. Directing doesn't show here. It looks more as if the actors were left to their own devices.

--the setting: the idea of a body farm is not in itself a problem. I don't know if there is such a place in the UK, but I know of at least one in the US. The problem with this particular setting is it's dirty. The "house" has paint peeling from the walls, clutter everywhere, from dirty dishes to wadded clothing to open shelving with who-knows-what. The "mortuary" is separated from the live-in area by a plastic curtain. Hardly ideal for a forensics lab.

Even worse, technical aspects of investigation and analysis are sorely lacking. A character says "Suit up" as the team prepares to enter a crime scene, only to show them dressed in paper booties and plastic gloves, and nothing else. Hairnets? Masks? Full-cover suits? Nah, why bother. If cross-contamination doesn't happen at the scene itself, it surely will back in the lab, where they lean over bodies, dropping hair, skin cells, their own DNA, whatever.

A real shame that the production team wasted the budget and some decent actors on this piece of drivel. As I said, I gave it four stars because it had potential. Sadly, that potential dwindled as of the first episode, and was never recovered.