Coma

After last weeks excruciately awful Love Rat I was hopeful that with jason watkins heading the cast ,that Coma would break the cycle of successive rubbish being served up by budget broadcasters Channel 5. Lack of finance has never stopped Ken Loach producing brilliant and relevant drama. However Coma could have been so much better in dealing with the problem of low life adolescent criminality. Unfortunately the makers of Coma chose to take the path of allowing actors such as jonas armstrong overact his part as local psycho gangster. Are we really living in the dystopian world portrayed in Coma. I don't believe so. Just remember mr Watkins to strike this one off your cv.

I thought this was quite a decent series. Plot kept my interest to the end and cast were excellent - the "baddies" more so than Jason Watkins, whose character was very insipid. Just the right length at 4 episodes and no sag in the final one.

I'm rather surprised by the poor reviews some have given this series. I've seen plenty of series which were stretched to 6 plus episodes when the storyline didn't merit it. Whilst I think Jason Watkins is a good actor he can be rather one dimensional so you know what you're going to get.

Decent script, filming and production so I'd certainly recommend it.

Firstly I read some other reviews just now before posting this. Some are very harsh and I think many people just expect too much. This obviously isn't going to be a big budget BBC or ITV drama, it's channel 5. Not saying it should get a free pass but the cast and crew are working on a different scale so it should be kept in mind when reviewing.

Like others I'm a big fan of Jason Watkins and he can't turn in a bad performance in my view. This show has an intriguing premise and as time goes on it does get a big bogged down in stereotypical gangster stuff but it has some decent twists and turns. A solid seven from me.

Felt compelled to leave a review after seeing the less than fair criticism given to this. For me the acting was great, the story was decent, it was filmed at a good pace and kept me engaged and watching right up to the end. The young boy Jonas Armstrong was very good and I can see him in lots of dramas in the future. This is not some big budget Hollywood movie with Oscar winning performances and I'm not really sure why everything has to be. It's a good drama, on a low scale budget and much better than Love Rat which was shown on channel 5 the previous week. To me Jason Watkins is always worth a watch and he and the rest of the cast did a great job.

Coma is a brilliantly tense thriller, over four hours of increasing intensity, there are no loops here just escalations.

It centres around a mild mannered Jason Watkins and a single moment, tormented by just about everything and anyone he snaps and his world unravels. Pretty soon he's sitting uncomfortably in wine bars with petty gangsters and lying to the police.

It is also awful, a great set of core names wondering what they are doing here. It is filmed in Eastern Europe and that doesn't get lost - it simply looks nothing like anywhere in the UK.

Somehow this manages to be enthralling, tense and awful at the same time.

It's 4 hours - it's channel 5 - there are worse things on TV to watch!