Love Rat

Channel 5 are throwing money at original drama productions and I suppose that's to be encouraged but once you've watched this you might reconsider.

Despite the premise of Love Rat being 'Men bad women daft' we gave it a go on my5 (ten years licence free this year thank you) with the intention of binge watching the series. It became clear early on that we wouldn't be doing that. The pacing was unrealistically fast C5 got four episodes out of this (more than enough) but Netflix would have got ten. The dialogue was awful and so unnatural its only purpose was to justify the next bit. None of the cast were good enough to save this. Amateur is the best way to describe it.

Love Rate quickly became a comedy for us and that continued part way into the second episode. We'd worked out the ending before Emma left for Cyprus while unpacking her kitchen boxes in the dark. The ridiculousness beat the humour and we decided to end it so we missed out on e3 and went for e4, the big finale. The suspense. We were right not to expect much. It was a chore to watch and every time we thought it couldn't get any worse, it did.

Despite its unintentional qualities Love Rat was about the worst show I remember watching. Channel 5 is rightly at the bottom of the pile in terms of quality TV but the overall quality of UK TV is on the slide and we find ourselves watching foreign language shows on Walter Presents on catch up on 4. The French, Germans and Italians are all producing TV that is far better.

I taped this as it was shown whilst I was away on holiday so binge watched it on my return. In truth, I needn't have bothered - this really was the worst piece of drama I've seen on TV for many a year. The production and direction were tolerable for the most part but the acting was dire. Not entirely the fault of the cast ... they were let down by a poor script. It was wooden, cliche-ridden and lacked any credibility in terms of characterisation. Such a shame. The scenario had huge potential and I was drawn into it by the title alone. Alas it failed to deliver. Sorry to be so negative but there it is.

Let's keep my review as simple as I can by keeping to the following pointers .. Very.wooden acting- totally implausible plot with so many holes in it like managing to hire a car in seconds. Nobody recognises the hotel owner! Sally Lindsey knows how to load a gun. Her Daughter manages to book a flight and arrive in record time. I could go on and on and what amazes me is how it makes the screen at all by managing to get past producers , cameramen and even the actors who surely must have some input by recognising the poor script or holes in the plot . Even the extras in it were thin on the ground .

OK its C5 and we expect something cheap and cheerful, but this only managed to over deliver on the cheapness.

Sally was introduced to us living in a house in the woods, which didn't seem to have any lights? Not surprisingly she went to Cyprus for some holiday sun - but her room there didn't have any lights either. The darkness followed her.

Seems like they couldn't afford a film crew...

This was a real Turkey in every single respect, Direction, Writing, Acting, Production Values, Score - they all sucked big time.

An embarrassing effort, one to avoid - or watch for laughs if you've had a few (too many) drinks.

Seriously you need subtitles because I could not understand a word that came from the annoying brat daughter characters mouth. It was some kind of mermaid gobbledygook squealing language. It didn't help that the daughter was also an annoying and selfish character, only interested in mummys divorce money for her salon. The story and script was so amateurish that it made the actors look bad and this can't be so because there are some well known and experienced actors in this series. Are we really to believe that chunky, matronly unfit Emma can knock guns out of fit males hands and run from them? So many holes in the story and editing that one would think a school kid wrote the script. Lazy script but I'm quite sure everyone had a great holiday abroad enjoying the sun. Watch it without rolling your eyes if you can.