Kiri

Hard hitting, grim with touches of humour.

Sarah Lancashire leaves the Happy Valley of Yorkshire for Gert Lush country, Bristol.

Lancashire plays a well meaning, compassionate and experienced social worker, Miriam. She needs to add a dash of the hard stuff on her morning cup of tea and has to bring the dog to work on account of all the ailments the dog has.

However her day is blown off course when she allows Kiri, a young black girl about to be adopted by her white parents visit to visit her real grandfather. To know where she comes from.

However Kiri fails to return home, believed to be abducted by her father. Now the blame lies on Miriam that she allowed an unsupervised visit to Kiri's grandparents.

Jack Throne has not written a whodunnit. This is about the fall out from a decision Miriam made, she is now going to be exposed to the press who already express that she went easy on her grandparents because they were black. Her bosses look like they will throw Miriam to the wolves and Miriam's life looks like it will spiral downwards in the following episodes.

There was much to like about this four-part series, but I'm afraid the last episode left me thinking the whole thing had run out of steam.

Brilliant performances by Sarah Lancashire as you might expect, and Stephen Mackintosh also showing his skill as a mature actor (I'm old enough to remember him when he was a schoolboy alongside Adrian Mole). The supporting cast also added weight to this tough drama.

I also loved the photography - in fact the atmosphere of the series was beautifully stylish, without it disappearing up its own backside.

However, I'll be honest and say I like my crime dramas to have decent endings, where the loose threads are neatly tied together and nothing is left in doubt. Everybody likes to see the culprit meet their comeuppance but this left one feeling the writer wasn't being clever in the way they drew the series to a conclusion, they were just being lazy.

The art of storytelling is really simple. A solid beginning, an exciting middle, with twists and turns along the way, and a brilliant ending, perhaps with some surprises. Certainly 9 out of 10 for the first two, but a disappointing 5 out of 10 for the finale.

The first episode was the best. I was hoping the pace would continue but it got slow and nothing much happened. Sarah Lancashire was the best part of this series. Worth it to watch her but otherwise not much going on. I give it a 4.

I would have rated higher if it wasn't for the ending. I did really enjoy this series but the ending was disappointing. Why do all films and tv programs these days have to have dubious endings where you have to guess what is actually going to happen instead of just rounding off the story? Back in the 80's or 90's this didn't happen the story reached a conclusion. Oh and Sarah Lancashire is brilliant and was not in the story enough for me.

As soon as I realised that Sarah Lancashire was a central character in this new production, I knew it was going to be good. Sarah, in her role as a human services case-manage working largely with young people and adoptive families (and possibly troubled families in general, we shall see) just eats it up, as usual and gives us a diamond character, in the rough of course. Some might believe she's been typecast and although there may be some similarity here to her role as a weary and wary copper in Happy Valley, it is only in her ability to portray courage, compassion with human foible so well; the characters are very different people. 'Miriam' is not tough and hard here like 'Catherine' is., though definitely exudes the personality of an experienced, down to earth woman. It's early days but we are introduced to a woman who seems almost happy-go-lucky way. Much more light-hearted and humoured in her approach. It becomes clear early on though that this may be a necessary facade to cope with previous tragedy in her life. And alas, it now seems she is to be the scapegoat for a terrible tragedy she could not foresee occurring with a child she is case manager for. But herein lies the mystery and the drama; perhaps we may see sides of Miriam which will lead us to question this 'diamond'. And question all involved in the life of the young girl at the centre of the tragedy, including the involvement of 'the system' as her 'warden of care'. So far, there are believable and sterling performances by all. I am also quite impressed with standouts Lucian Msamati and Claire Rushbrook. Perhaps the only weakness I personally see (others may not) revolve around the central adoptive family who seem a little too good to be true juxtaposed to what I feel is a rather callous disregard for their adopted child's family of origin. That is a flimsy observation on my behalf at this stage. It's only one episode for me thus far, after all. So I await eagerly the thick to plotten...