The Wives

I watched this because I liked the premise of it. Three sisters-in-law, on holiday in Malta, turn amateur sleuths investigate the mysterious diseappearance of the fourth sister-in-law from the year before. They are aided and abetted by their niece (the disappeared sister-in-law's daughter) and eventually by the new girlfriend of the diseappeared lady, Turns out everyone has secrets (uncluding the theree wives) and a motive for wanting the disappeared lady out of the way. And who is the myterious stranger, the divorced wife meets via a dating app and how is he connected to the disappearance?

Although billed as a mystery thriller it comes across more as a comedy thriller or a black comedy. This does actually work well. The best part for me is the relationship between the three wives (making wisecracks, falling in and out with each other and bickering and getting themselves into scrapes). Although you're made to initially disike the new girlfriend you do eventually warm to her, especially with her outsiders aspect on the familys relationships and a lot of her out downs towards the others.

A similar attempt is made to create the same kind of relationship between the three brothers (the husbands) but they aren't as good actors and it doesn.t work as well,. Likewsie neither does having one of the brothers perpertually overseas and therefore neer seen.

And then there's the ending which I am going to just decribed as.......poor.

Entertaining, worth a watch.

This is not a perfect series but I loved the acting. Angela Griffin is an underrated British actress and I thought her performance was very believable. Tamzin Outhwaite is perfectly cast as a "cougar". She's beautiful and believable as a 40 plus a woman. I was disappointed with Jo Joyner. I found her acting stilted self-conscious and unbelievable. It's a run-of-the-mill story. Somebody goes missing on a holiday but what's unbelievable is all the friends and family go back and live their lives like it's never happened. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it and I wanted to love it. If you like a story with no conclusion and no promise of a second series, watch it. If you like everything tied up in knots like I do give it a miss.

Okay to watch, but there's no end to the story.

For some reason the writers, director, producers, etc think they're far smarter than they are and left it on a whimper instead of a bang. Could have been so much better than it was, if it had contained a start, middle and ending that were clearer about story, characters and point to the whole thing. As it was who had married whom got lost along the way, as did several other plot lines, and whole areas weren't addressed at all (where did the chips come from? Why use them?)

I lost 6 hours of my life for nothing.

If there is a second outing, doubt l'll bother viewing.

Avoid this series like the plague, absolutely terrible script, unfortunately the acting is even more terrible. At no time does the plot make any sense, it seems to consist of quaffing large glasses of red wine, every other comment being about sex then a big row then everyone all friends again , and so it goes on around and around.

It takes about one minute into the first episode to realise this is a must miss, it made me miss the days of the test card being screened.

Anyway that's enough of the goods points !

The only plus side to it is that as it is a channel 5 production it means it didnt come out of license fee money.

This is a bargain basement C5 production shot and set in sunny Malta, which is all good. Not so good was the awful script full of stock characters and soapy scenes that we've all seen before umpteen times. This is a murder mystery, problem was I didn't care about any of the characters..

As a show it was quite badly produced and directed. Tonally it veered between comedy, murder-mystery and romcom, it certainly wasn't a thriller. The direction was a bit off with a lot of odd angles and cuts. The cheesy plinky-plonky score added nothing but irritation.

It was dull and the script and acting were well below par. One you can safely give a swerve.