Such a great potential! First episode set up intriguing enigmas. Yet episode after episode I was hit with one disastrous writing train crash after the other.
Acting is great! Alas what can one actor with such disappointing material?!
I read quite a few reviews on here. I do not have a problem with representational set ups that go against the heteronormativity; see beta male stay-at-home dad; queer police officer.
Sadly, this drama reinforces itv's negative expectations aka populist drama that deliberately avoids engaging the audience in any cerebral shape or form. Cliché after cliché whose only function is to make the audience respond on the moral panic plat du jour.
This gets just 5 stars thanks to acting, filming, visual mood and feel that has been carefully constructed.
The other 5 starts have been lost in deplorable writing; see archetypal villain with cringe-worthy lines; police officers being represented as dumb sidekicks; main hero "taking matters into their own hands" in the most surreal, improbable and unrealistic way; side plot devices, characters with even more cliché lines; single parent father - son relationship infested with poor dialogue; supporting characters whose function is only to help the hero deliberate some kind of common sense before all that is thrown into the wind in a New York minute. .. the list is endless.
The subject mater is of very high interest, yet I fear that many itv viewers will simply bite on the moral panic bandwagon. Such a shame, especially considering how much input the writers have had from a range of relevant support groups.
... and then series 2 came along... WT! (I really would have liked to be a fly on the wall in the room where the series 2 commissioning meeting took place). Baffled...
