Summer of Rockets

I loved this, mostly for the fabulous production, perfect period setting, faultless acting and just dreamy comfortable escapism. Cleverly positioned humour dampened somewhat by weak satire.

However if you focus too much on the plot then it becomes a bit of a drag, bouncing back and forward and not necessarily going anywhere. It achieves its goal to instill a feeling of paranoia and mistrust, which worked well until the slightly daft ending. A deftly psychological thriller that ended up like an episode of Dad's army or last of the summer wine.

The Anthony story made no sense and wasn't entirely explained.

That aside, I still wouldn't have missed a sparkling performance by Keeley Hawes (Awards Long overdue) the epitome of the English Wife and a masterclass in received pronunciation. Toby Stevens brings an outstanding depth to the lead character Petrukhin as does his hilarious family ensemble.

Definitely recommended for the polished production; a cracking yarn mingled with the menace of espionage and subterfuge.

Enough reviews about the series, I enjoyed, excellent, intriguing.

I want to write in response to lots of queries over the ending!

I believe that the daughter had taken part in a make up of the plan that the secret service had inklings about, and that her writer friend was also involved with MI5/6 and had been able to feed in to the comedy episode shown on the TV which brought all the dastardly plans to an abrupt end, after the daughter had unwittingly revealed a conversation with her dad.

So it all makes sense if you take this into account.

The missing son storyline, which again a lot of people were perplexed by, I believe again was that he had provided information to MI5/6 as soon as he had become aware, and had been advised to disappear to protect himself, and his preferred way of vegan life.

Overall, as good as any Agatha Christie. Kept you intrigued and confused right till the end!

I loved the acting, especially the lead lady.

Anything starring Keeley Hawes is going to be worth watching and this little drama is no exception. It's a fun bit of nonsense - very reminiscent of an episode of The Avengers from the late sixties - but far more elaborate. As usual with the BBC, the sub-plots hammer every politically correct stereotype going. The villains are all white, middle-aged, middle class males, the heroes are all either from a minority group or disabled. Of course, the police are racist and the young white men (except for the gay man and the vegetarian) are violent boors. Even the poor little debutantes get a drubbing. All boringly predictable - but it was fun seeing Lily Sacofsky giving one of the nasty young men a taste of her knee! To be fair though, I did enjoy this drama and would recommend it as a lightweight bit of entertainment.

I give this series two stars for good production values in costume and scenery design. In every other aspect it is dreadful Toby Stevens constant overacting worked ok in the cartoonish Black Sails, but has failed in everything else. The plot of summer of rockers is unengaging, and frankly juvenile. Lastly the heavy and forced political correctness puts the final nail in this mess.

Without wishing to spoil the story for those that haven't seen this yet I shall just say that this was a great drama up until the last 20 mins. The ending is utterly ridiculous and unbelievable which is such a shame as the acting is superb as one would expect with such a cast. I'm actually baffled how Poliakoff managed to write such an appalling ending. it really is quite an achievement.