Playing Nice

My Review- Playing Nice Streaming on SBS on Demand My Rating - 7.5/10 This interesting and emotionally charged four part one off mini series poses a question no parent would ever hopefully be faced with .

How would you react if you were called to a meeting by the Chief of a Hospital to tell you how sorry they were that the young child you had nurtured from birth was not actually yours ?

Due to a mix up of name tags accidental or otherwise each baby had in fact been handed over to the wrong parents which later was confirmed by DNA testing.

Now two couples face the horrifying dilemma of either keeping the sons they have raised and loved from birth or reclaiming their biological child.

James Norton and Niamh Algar star as a couple Pete Riley and Maddie Wilson the parents of Theo their young son.

The other couple Miles and Lucy Lambert are played by James McCardle and Jessica Brown Findlay are parents to David who has health some issues .

Miles when told that Theo the more active outgoing child is actually his son sets in place a devious set of legal challenges and investigations that threaten Pete and Maddies custody of their son .

Playing Nice is an excellent title for this series because The Lambert's appear to be playing nice in the beginning however as the excellent screenplay by Grace Ofori-Attah based on a global best seller by J. P. Delaney progresses the true colours of Miles Lambert are revealed.

I found this series very well produced , directed and I enjoyed the performances from all the cast ,especially James Norton.

The story really fits the bleak winter of Cornwall. The characters can be a little infuriating, but you're left to stew in your own emotions while you wait for the story to evolve.

Loved seeing Mevagissey as it's rarely seen in Cornish TV programs. Watergate, Truro and Saint Agnes, as well as a few south coast beaches also take a starring role.

But the scenery does it for me. It's the real deal.

In an age of fakery and cgi, this drama feels real and at a pace that you'll soon get used to, like the pace of life in Cornwall, UK.

I suggest you go find these places off season, you won't be disappointed.

High hopes for this mini-series, but these were quickly dashed within 10 minutes of the first episode.

Formulaic, predictable and entirely unbelievable. A waste of a promising premise and quality cast.

By the time you get to the end of the final episode, you know what is going to be the outcome, but will struggle to care either way. Pantomime villains and seems to borrow a lot of the main protagonist's characteristics from Sleeping with the Enemy, only not as well or as menacingly.

There are so many flaws in the plot you lose the ability to empathise with the characters despite the awful situation.

It could and should have been so much better!

Four episodes of superb acting, plot, backdrop, everything! Horrific idea underpinning the whole thing but its all entirely plausible, really real characters, the story build and builds. And the way the "system" gets involved in these things is well portrayed. It'd be easy to binge watch the whole thing, was so good I saved the final episode to look forward to another day. Not a single weak episode in the whole thing - am really not sure what the couple of poor reviews were watching. It wasn't this! This is one of the best TV dramas I've seen for ages, will almost certainly watch it again. Highly recommend!

I watched this as I'm on maternity and it's close to my heart because I've just been through the NNU experience myself, so it was lovely to watch to trigger so of my emotions I think I needed to feel, relating to the characters.

Some of the scenes were a little far fetched and some were 'why wouldn't you or would you' moments, which did hold me back fully enjoying the series.

The acting was brilliant, as I said I could really relate to the mothers in this.

The series was just the right amount of episodes and time per episodes, I could stop an episode half way through and pick it back up quite quickly.

8/10 because I'd recommend, and watch again. Just lacking those two points for the storyline being a little over stretched.