When she was in her first US series, Without a Trace, she was very credible - her American accent and acting were really believable - maybe due to being surrounded by good actors, including foreigners who could nail an American accent in Marianne Jean-Baptiste and fellow Ozzie Anthony la Paglia, whose Emmy proves his skill. Her native accent began to slip in in Unforgettable, and so did her annoying habit of being a flippant, reckless hair tossing coquette, which gets really old really fast. The credibility level of that show - as far as plausible situations and believable police procedures - was far below that of Without a Trace, but it was still entertaining.
With this mess, a lazy, half-assed attempt to present a breezy, escapist show for summer audiences, clearly created by using a formula written by committee (Cute lead character name? Check? Potentially interesting, if convoluted, backstory to reveal piecemeal to keep viewers coming back? Check. Criminal with a heart of gold? Check. Cops with feet of clay? Check. Strong women with mad varied skills like hand to hand combat and nurturing? Check. Lots of nasty rich people playing with expensive toys to gin up class envy? Check. Diverse enough for the woke community? Check)
Poppy's actiing has declined even further - her acting is by turns, mannered and affected, or smug and jejune - not becoming on a woman of her age. Sure, it is great to see a normal looking woman in clothing that actual women wear to the beach, but her arrested adolescence undermines anyone's ability to take her seriously. Any comparisons to Hawaii Five-O, the original or current, is a gross insult - as that show, as over the top as it can be, at least has cohesive writing and somewhat plausible plots and far more talented actors.
Poppy's character behaves as though she is the only person with a functioning brain or moral compass in the Southern hemisphere, let alone on The Reef. The rest of them are mediocre actors or worse, save the burly Irishman Ray Stevenson, who plays the soon to be ex-husband who lied to her about being an undercover Fed and who now answerable to nobody even though he still seems to be a working agent. Any scene he is in makes the rest of the actors in it look even more lame, even though he allows Cat to lead him around by his, well... you know.
The guy who plays the horny cub to her cougar is definitely tasty eye candy, except for his execrable hair - it just hangs there in thin strings glued together above his shoulders. I hate man buns when they are not on a samurai, but I found myself begging this clown to bundle that raggedy mess up! Plus he is so wooden, he could be confused with a mast on one of the many sailboats populating Reef Island (really, who names an independent island nation something so banal - is it on the Wet Sea?)
Melissa Bonne, who plays Cat's cohort/nemesis, is the second best actor after Stevenson, but her character needs only a Snidely Whiplash mustache that she can put on and off between being an amoral political hack for a creepy politician and a Strong Female showing her vulnerability as she fights the sisterhood bond she feels from Cat.
I won't even get started with the monumentally lazy work by the writers and producers, who cannot even be bothered with continuity, let alone making sure that the cars are on the correct side of the road. Other people have done a stellar job pointing out that egregiousness.
It is not even awful enough to be So Bad It's Good - which at least affords viewers the opportunity for unintended hilarity. No, it is just bad. I would not be surprised if Poppy's next effort includes the talent free Rachelle Lefevre, whose last series was atrocious, despite the presence of a lot more talent than Poppy's co-stars. It must be the red hair and curvy bodies that keep production and casting companies hiring them. However, we know Poppy CAN and HAS done better, Lefevre just continues to demonstrate her shortcomings as an actor.
So, if you want something for background noise and pretty pictures, with a little bit of a train wreck from which you cannot look away, keep this on in the background when you are working or doing something else that requires minimal attention.
