Insomnia

I was looking forward to this as I'm a big fan of Vicki McClure, but honestly even an actor of her calibre couldn't stop this from sliding into one woeful mess. At first the story seems compelling enough, but after a few episodes the characters start to behave in ways that will have you shouting at your television. The respective sub-plots featuring the teenage daughter's dodgy relationship and the sister's fertility struggles add nothing to the story except to provide the characters with further opportunities to demonstrate poor judgement and engage in cringeworthy conversations where everyone talks in circles. The second to last episode enters the realms of hackneyed, scorned stalker out for revenge who does a bunch of silly things that are completely ludicrous and overblown and ohhhh my, the kid's behaviour in the final scene... I was hoping a meteorite would land on the house and put everyone out their misery. Is it a revenge thriller? Is it a supernatural thriller? Is it a social commentary about adults who try to be their kids' besties instead of parenting? Or a piece about overly ambitious middle class professionals handcuffed by mortgages on gigantic houses in the countryside, burdened by their past relationships with creepy family members? Who knows? Please don't do it again, Vicky, you're so much better than this.

Interesting concept but the acting talent (Vicky McClure) is absolutely wasted on the dire script. Every line of dialogue is obvious, lazy and sounds almost like it was written by someone's child on their work experience. The characters don't feel real or believable because every single line is written to get the story from A-B-C rather than to tell us anything about the character. Like at a certain point in the script we are asking 'why was x character being so secretive?' so now another character has to ask this exact question out of nowhere. All tell and no show.

I made it through the first episode only but there's no way I'm going to make it through the rest. Really such a shame as this could have been far more interesting if better executed.

Insomnia had me hooked from the first episode. I love UK shows and this mystery with a twist had me craving more with each passing minute. As a writer I think I have pretty much worked out where it is going, and had done so by the end of the first episode, but I might be completely wrong. Vicky McClure as Emma Averill is brilliant! My only criticism would be that she doesn't 'really' try to fall asleep before getting out of bed. I have had bouts of insomnia for weeks that have had me in the ER, so I get it. This show is dark, creepy, and brilliant. You can feel that there is something just not right under the surface and you have to figure out what exactly is going on, but it's not as simple as Emma going mad. Definitely give it a shot you will not be disappointed.

I was excited to watch this as Vicky McClure has done some great TV and the cast is strong but it didn't live up to my expectations.

I won't post spoilers but the overall story is actually really good however the show takes way too long to get to any kind of reveal.

At first it's unclear whether it's a crime/thriller story or something paranormal. This doesn't add to the suspense but is just annoying as it feels like the show doesn't actually know what it's about. Some of the side storylines are probably supposed to be interesting red herrings but they just feel increasingly pointless as the series goes on.

This could have been an excellent two-parter as there are some decent performances from a solid cast and the core story (when they get to it) is good. As it is, it feels puffy and self-indulgent which is a real shame and a real waste.

Lucky Vicky McClure! As we join her in this 6-part Paramount psychological drama with vaguely supernatural overtones. She may be closing in on her 40th birthday but her Emma is now a successful lawyer and about to become partner in a big firm, lives in a big detached house in the country and is happily married to her dependable, easygoing husband and bringing up their two kids, an 18 year-old daughter and primary school-age son.

But her luck changes spectacularly when her free-spirited younger sister Phoebe, played by Leanne Best, re-enters her life to tell her their mother is dying in hospital. Mum has suffered for years from mental illness and was separated from her two daughters when they were very young. Seriously troubled, she's prone to writing out a series of seemingly random numbers and sleepwalking like an entranced Lady Macbeth. This culminates in a particular episode when she was stopped in the act of suffocating her youngest in her sleep until the infant Emma stopped her just in time.

As she's put into an institution, the mother tells Emma that she too has her "bad blood" and that it will out in time. Meanwhile, the two young girls are brought up in a care home where Emma too starts to write out the same numbers on the dormitory walls. There's a strange incident where it seems that the young Phoebe tries to drown her which leads to Emma being placed with another couple who have a daughter of their own...

Back in the present day, Emma now finds she's sleepwalking throughout and has returned to her numbers fixation at work. Just for good measure, her daughter Chloe is taking drugs and having her first serious affair and the young son is starting to withdraw into himself, exhibiting mood-swings and is obsessively filling his exercise book with drawings of a "bad lady". Distracted, Emma accidentally knocks down a nurse at the hospital where her mum's being kept. Then her mum dies under suspicious circumstances and everything really kicks off from there.

Wildly over the top in construction and conception, you have to suspend disbelief in this crazy drama and try not to think of "Fatal Attraction" or "Single White Female" as you go. The last episode in particular throws every clichéd situation into the pot, including that one where the heroine races back to her family home to save her family having notified the police, who of course finally turn up an eternity after she does and long after all the climactic action has played out and the big reveals going all the way back in time are made, requiring the viewer to accept plot-jumps and coincidences bigger than a fleet of buses before it calms down at the very end...or does it?

McClure leads the cast through this silly stuff and nonsense where to my mind they all do a great job keeping their faces straight as they engage with every implausible plot-point thrown in front of them. I particularly commend McClure and Best for accomplishing this task as they explain the significance of the numbers to the viewers. It was all I could do to do the same but in the end, I decided to stop nitpicking and just surrender myself to the sheer daftness of it all.