The Ghost Squad

In the first episode we follow a police complaints division investigation into brutality accusations at a police station. The drama is shown from the point of view of Amy, a young female officer who's 'collar' is murdered in an interview room. As she tries to clear her name during the 'lock-down' no-one can be trusted, and the division between right and wrong blurs remarkably. This is a well made TV drama that shows off the talents of Elaine Cassidy well. My only gripe is that the makers had the chance to break the mould for this kind of drama and chose not to do so. Too many drama series produced today make use of the narrative style of showing things from the viewpoint of a single central character; it has become a writers cliché. The obvious conclusion of the first episode was that Amy was going to join the undercover squad after showing her mettle; she gave such a strong performance right from the outset that it became a foregone conclusion. How much more intriguing (and difficult) it would have been had they used the tension created during an internal investigation by showing it from the point of view of the people it affected, moving on to a new investigation and new central character each week.

I think this has been, in the main, a good series if a little patchy and uneven. At times, it has shown the police service in an unflattering light (casual racism, corruption, violence), but also I think has tried to be even handed by showing what a challenging, and often thankless job, modern policing is. 'Ghost Squad' has managed to avoid some of the clichés of the usual cop shows by showing the darker side of policing, the embittered front line officers etc, and how hard it is to maintain one's poise/dignity in the face of unrelenting hostility and how hard it is to do good often in the face of opposition & cynicism from one's own colleagues.

I thought the series was at its best when the cases were less sensational, the third episode in particular where Amy investigated a typical gruff front line officer possibly involved in the disappearance of a young girl. As through most of the series, the plots twisted and turned, played with your expectations with Amy discovering the information at the same time as the audience so that often, we, like her, were no nearer the truth than she was. I expect that's why the POV of the series was mostly through her character.

I enjoyed the final feature length episode though I agree with the last comment that after all the twists and turns it really did not merit a feature length. I felt uncomfortable with Amy's revelation to Gus, the officer under investigation that she was working undercover and how her handler, Mackay did not seem at all interested in her welfare but in the outcome of the case. I feel this is where fiction parted company from reality. More interesting was how Pete, her colleague, and in love with Amy himself, tried to fabricate evidence after listening to Amy & Gus making love.

The final episode disappointed slightly with its ending - though it did avoid a pat ending and left us in doubt about Gus. Credit to C4 though. Even if 'Ghost Squad' was flawed, it was nonetheless an interesting variant on cop clichés. Earlier, I watched Jack Rosenthal's reworking of 'Ready When You are Mr McGill', the work of a fine writer for TV, but also an indictment of modern TV and TV drama. Sometimes it's better to fail with an interesting experiment than peddle the same tired old rope. Writers like Dennis Potter didn't always succeed, but at least they were given the opportunity.

I was a bit disappointed with this series (I haven't seen the last two episodes though). Most stories were simply too smug relying on the obvious dilemma the theme suggests... and the cinematic means as well as the narrative were always quite pretentious without being convincing, leaving loose ends all around. The distracting look of it, jump cuts and hand-held, "different" to a fault, could not hide the lack of quality in the storytelling.

The acting was quite good though - and that made the episodes worthwhile, above all those less "spectacular" subject-wise -, Elaine Cassidy being a standout as usual. I think she is internationally one of the finest actresses around.

I started watching this show on youtube.com after becoming a fan of Elaine Cassidy. I fell in love with the show right away. I was looking around for the DVD, but it isn't available in region 1 as far as I can tell. It looks like you can preorder the 10 disc DVD from Amazon.co.uk (region 2), although some sites will tell you that it isn't going to be made available on DVD. Anyway, I am a fan of the show and was really sad to learn that it had been cancelled after only one season. I think that the producers gave up on it way too soon. I think they should have waited to see if more people became familiar with it come the second season. I am certain that the ratings would have improved had people actually watched it. I live in the US and liken their cancellation of the show to the cancellation of Alias or 24 after only the first season. I would most definitely watch it if it were to return to TV. I just think the producers should know what viewers think and so I am sharing my 2 cents.

Thanks.

It is really hard to give a series a 10 because no one is perfect. So, the best I could come up with is I found the shaky camera technique (which was downright annoying on NYPD Blue) unnecessary.

The acting, writing, production, direction, etc all get 10s. Warning: this show is so intense at times that you miss the subtleties, and so subtle at times that you miss the intensity.