Fair City

My God, this series is *awful*. It makes almost *any* other soap look like high art. It is on the "bad" side of "so bad, it's funny".

The acting is mediocre, at best, the story-lines unexceptional, but the *dialogue*: the script-writers should be burnt alive on a pyre of the future scripts. Occasionally, I really feel sorry for the actors who have to deal with such wholly implausible dialogue: a friend reckons that more experienced actors would tell the director to stick it where the sun don't shine, and I can't disagree -- it's just dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.

In fairness, there are a few green shoots of acting talent, but they are doomed in the dark, weedy, untended mire that is "Fair City": if they want to flourish, they need a transplant to much more fertile ground.

Fair City, Irelands answer to Eastenders is, in my opinion one of the most amateur productions ever to grace the screens of Irish television. The acting, on a whole is of the lowest standard I have ever seen, young schoolkids act better in school plays than the cast of Fair City! It is badly directed, acted and produced, most of the cast say their lines with no emotion or authenticity whatsoever, they all seem as if the have never had any training in acting school, because most of them are unconvincing. Characters seem to drop out of the series for weeks, maybe even months on end, then they suddenly reappear with no explanation as to where they were. Perhaps RTE who produce the show cannot afford to pay the entire casts wages week by week so they concentrate on a few characters in a particular storyline for a few weeks then when that story is dealt with, they bring back the cast who have been missing for ages. It is almost too embarrassing to watch due to the substandard 'acting' (for want of a better word!) and I would not recommend anyone to watch it unless they want to see how NOT to make a soap/drama. If you want to have a laugh at the very bad standard of acting and directing, watch Fair City. If you like well acted and produced shows then avoid this at all costs!

If this series wasn't paid for by the public it would've been cancelled in its first week!!!! Seriously it's CRAP!!!!!

I don't know how they manage to make it so bad. Every scene in the show goes exactly the same way. Actor walks in, regurgitates lines, reply from other actor, actor walks out. The actors aren't particularly bad, I've seen them in other stuff and they can act (sort of).

I can't say I could focus on the show long enough to pick up any plots, but what I've seen has been boring and painful. I do know one guy is dying of cancer at the moment, which you can only feel good about because all the actors play the worst of Dublin snobs that you just want to see die in the most horrible ways.

It's like going to visit your granny as a child and sitting in the middle of a group of old women talking about knitting, bunions or putting tea bags on their eyes. You just want to chew the table and pull your eyes out of your head.

On the plus side there may be adds on the other channels that provide better entertainment value than this half arsed tripe.

Fair City used to be good, but in recent times it really has went down hill. Issues like clerical sex abuse, brother/sister incest, drugs, suicide and teenage drinking have been brought in, just for the sake of it. Also the stories are becoming far too sensational, with another recent one involving the school principal's girlfirend having an affair with a student, who is dating her daughter.

This is a total change for the character, who originally was really straight laced and strict

Another thing that really annoys me is the fact that characters can just disappear for months on end. One of the characters, Stephen, has been missing for at least three or four months now. Maybe even since before Christmas! Storylines just concentrate on a group of characters for maybe a week or two, until its all changed and we are onto another group of characters. There's no real continuity.

Unless it gets a major overhaul, Fair City could be axed despite still being highly rated it just isn't the show it once was.