Brindleton

The press and amateur podcasters appear when a honeymoon couple disappear. Ellis and Harper are called in to assist DCI Cotton on the case, the vital clue is a severed hand, found in their camper van.

This show has gotten better and better, and this final episode from the first series is definitely the standout episode, I thought this one was terrific.

Excellent from start to finish, the storyline was so engaging, I really got into it. Ellis herself needed no time to develop, Harper on the other hand has grown massively, they make a terrific duo.

It raises one very interesting point, how on Earth can The Police do their job, when one man and his dog are on the case, I'm sure we've all listened to real life crime podcasts.

I liked Amanda Drew's character, DCI Cotton, and it made a nice change for Ellis and Harper to walk into a.

David Sterne was excellent as Foster Lang, I'm so used to seeing him as Tom in Sister Boniface, it's almost hard to see him playing a straight role, he was great in this.

More please Channel 5, please get this recommissioned asap.

9/10.

We have really enjoyed the first two episodes of Ellis, so it was a shame to go out on this confused pile of mush.

What really made the Ellis character was the palpable tension that existed between her and the ultra-defensive, highly-dubious, non-performing police forces she was sent along by Leighton to sort out. Here she had a sort of bumbling country bumpkin lot, amiable pheasant-pluckers every single one of them, and no real tension whatever.

And no real plot either.

In the first two episodes, Ellis would stride purposefully in wearing that calf-length coat, just like a wild-west character in one of those long 'dusters' of which Clint Eastwood was so fond. Dare I say an authentic Eastwood re-creation as a "not-so-pale rider", and this gave her so much screen presence and forcefulness. Here she was just being nice to everyone, even just about nice to the painful Lydia of multiple surnames, whom she surely should have had cuffed and taken out of the equation, sans mobile, until the crime(s) were solved. All this surfeit of niceness was such a reversal of character, someone of whom we get glimpses of being deep-down nice underneath, but who gets things done by being tough when she has to be.

4/10, and we will hope for better if the series comes back.