Coma

After last weeks excruciately awful Love Rat I was hopeful that with jason watkins heading the cast ,that Coma would break the cycle of successive rubbish being served up by budget broadcasters Channel 5. Lack of finance has never stopped Ken Loach producing brilliant and relevant drama. However Coma could have been so much better in dealing with the problem of low life adolescent criminality. Unfortunately the makers of Coma chose to take the path of allowing actors such as jonas armstrong overact his part as local psycho gangster. Are we really living in the dystopian world portrayed in Coma. I don't believe so. Just remember mr Watkins to strike this one off your cv.

Firstly I read some other reviews just now before posting this. Some are very harsh and I think many people just expect too much. This obviously isn't going to be a big budget BBC or ITV drama, it's channel 5. Not saying it should get a free pass but the cast and crew are working on a different scale so it should be kept in mind when reviewing.

Like others I'm a big fan of Jason Watkins and he can't turn in a bad performance in my view. This show has an intriguing premise and as time goes on it does get a big bogged down in stereotypical gangster stuff but it has some decent twists and turns. A solid seven from me.

I'm not really into these four or five part drama series. They're rarely well written and tend to lose their way. And they always headline with the same rotating pack of drama actors.

This one however sounded a good premise. God the acting was terrible. From everyone apart from the wife. The 'victim' was the worse. He couldn't act for toffee and we were way better off with him in the coma. The main character had the option to just shrug it off and disappear into his own life.. That would have been great. It could have just built up behind the scenes in two different stories coming together for the finale. But instead, it was he had the classic rabbit in the headlights response. .

I was bored and as I'm old enough to make my own mind up, life is too short to watch a well trodden bore fest. Two episodes was all I was willing to give it.

I was looking forwards to viewing this as I liked the three main leads.

However a poor script ;often too repetitive gave the series a lack of drive.

The police were once again portrayed as inadequate buffoons.

The young actor who played the lout showed only a characture of what was a pivotal role ,though again this was the script rather than the actor.

The story could have been told in one episode My version was that Simon should have told Paul that it was his(Simon's) boss who hit the boy.

Then when Paul had dealt with this person,Simon could have anonymously phoned the police with details of the offence. Paul would be arrested and locked up and Simon was off the hook having only to deal with junior psycho.

I was really looking forward to this drama because of the excellent cast. Jason Watkins has been consistently excellent in everything I've seen him in. The problem with this is the fanciful script. It's too silly for words. The characters aren't that likeable. Jason Watkins' character is a complete "Wally". It's hard to believe his wife would be in a relationship with him as he's so helpless.

The story became more unbelievable with each episode. I was at the stage where I was expecting them to discover Lord Lucan hiding in their garden. It could have been a really dripping story but was let down by the weak script. I love British drama but this was a big let down.