London Kills

London Kills struggled to get into its stride during season one, despite a solid underlying premise. The main characters on the team are introduced as is the story arc regarding the disappearance of DI Bradford's wife, Sarah. The problem lies in the weakness of the episodic cases, mostly riddled with holes and magic leaps, whilst the missing wife story plays second fiddle.

Season two is a complete turnaround rising from mediocre to quite good. The stories are generally coherent and a much greater emphasis is placed on the Sarah plotline making each individual episode and the season as a whole feel more consistent and engaging.

A decent cast performed well, despite poorly written dialogue in season one. Season two made the relationships more believable with both Sharon Small and Hugo Speer benefitting from their characters' being more relatable with less random caricature disagreements.

The improvement in season two bodes well for three which I am gleefully anticipating.

What are some of these reviewers talking about ? I just watched this show i think its brilliant like other Brit shows like Line Of Duty .There are some really good quality shows coming out of the uk right now this is definetly one of them.

Great story lines, but every time there is an office scene phones are ringing in the background... I understand they want to make it realistic but it's just a bit tooooooooo much.. can you get an extra actor to answer these calls?

When BBC's daytime soap opera does off air it is replaced by some good dramas. Shakespeare and Hathaway have been great in the last year. This summer we have been given London Kills. A detective drama focused on Hugo Speer's droll murder detective whose wife has been missing for 3 months. The first thing to say is that the acting is good. It's a solid script and the main cast work well together. The issues start to arise with the repetitive nature. Murder happens, wiring person confesses, right person is caught and it starts again. Always sitting in the background is the missing wife storyline. It's hinted at but not really explained. The main issue though is the ludicrously low budget. The main office has no one else working in it, the cafes and pubs are empty and the streets are equally empty which all takes away the realism. It is a shame because actually it is not a bad series. It just doesn't flow that well and feels a tad clunky at times. That said the writers have done a decent job and there have been much worse programmes and will be worse.

The show has secured a season so may well grow but for now its a case of not bad but low budget does soil certain aspects of the snow.

It's watchable. Considering the base material, the acting is OK. But the plot is full of holes, the dialogue is corny and predictable, and the intrigue and character psychology are below soap-standard mushy. Oh, and it's directed like a soap, too. The UK have a strong tradition of producing quality police procedurals, usually with strong plots and characters: Prime suspect, GBH, Luther, LIne of Duty, Bodyguard, and the list goes on... Unfortunately, this is not one of these. I guess, aside from the expensive cars (a DI drives an executive merc that is usually marketed to successful senior executives and entrepreneurs!) they didn't have much money to shoot this one and it shows a bit as well. So this sums it all up: not much script, not much money, not much talent, yielding very average entertainment. They should save resources and not make a second series: no one will lose any sleep not knowing who killed the DI's wife. Just saw the end of series 2: it's even worse than I originally thought. I hope they don't make series 3.