callladd

All the ingredients for a good movie are there but it doesn't quite work. Maybe the fault lies with the director, or maybe it's the way the character of Ann was written but the contradiction in her character really threw to movie off kilter.

In most of the movie, Katherine Hepburn's Ann is a rather insecure, traditional wife who is working hard to make her husband happy while ignoring the obvious warning signs. The problem is that when we first meet Ann, she's the complete opposite of that type of woman.

Ann is an intelligent modern woman who helps in her father's chemistry lab, even calls him by his first name. She's not worried in the least about being "an old maid", she's strong and independent. However, when she meets Alan, she morphs into a helpless wallflower. I kept waiting for her to find the backbone she exhibited in the opening of the movie.

The other flaw with the movie - Brahms. I love that piece but to say it was overplayed is an understatement.

I can't remember the last time I wrote a review for a series I didn't finish watching but this one calls for a review. 'Crime' is dreadful.

The lead actor has zero charisma and his character's mental instability is painful to watch. But he's not the worst aspect of the show, the writing (aka lecturing/hectoring) is.

The female lead character is a ridiculous feminist cliché. She's so bad you'd think this show was a parody. From the get-go she scolds someone over the use of the word frog for the French couple, she scolds her partner for the "stereotype" that children from single-parent homes are easier targets (is that a stereotype or a statistic?). Then there's the -- you would do x/y/z if I were a male cop. Oh put a sock in it! It's the 2020s not the 1920s and chances are she'd have as many female superiors on the force as male.

But wait, there's more whining about the patriarchy from the lead character's girlfriend (or maybe she's his wife, didn't stick with the show long enough to learn the details of that relationship).

All in all, this was the most dreadful BritBox original we've seen and we've watched most of them.

Given the importance of the Battle of Britain, really the battle to save Europe, this movie should be intensely dramatic, instead, it's absolutely boring. The battles might be the most accurate on film but there is no tension, no fear, no drama.

The women moving markers on the large maps is historically accurate but painfully dull to watch. The officers overseeing the room look as bored as I was. If you're not going to build drama with dialogue, build it with tense music but that too was lacking.

And then there's the women in this film. I've read that the director was obsessive when it came to getting the planes and battles historically correct and yet he failed miserably in the easiest detail - the women's hair styles. The female characters all look like young women in the late 1960s, not 1940, it was a major distraction.