The Burning Girls

I really did love The Burning Girls! Loved the cast, loved the characters, loved premise, loved the location and loved the supernatural elements. By about the second or third episode I was starting to worry that there might be too many plots and subplots on the go for 6 episodes, but all of the stories intertwined and came to an extremely satisfying conclusion. I watch a fair amount of mystery dramas, and I am always incensed when I reach the final episode only to discover the main murder was actually an accident. This obviates the need for a proper motive and is extremely lazy writing. You will not get this with The Burning Girls, there are motives galore (even if some of them stretched my credulity a little bit). The Burning Girls follows a tried and true crime/mystery drama formula, while throwing in a spoonful of Wicker Man, Happy Valley, The Exorcist and a pinch of Scandi noir. It worked for me and I have given it full marks, as I cannot image a more enjoyable example of the genre.

The final episode of this cliched series is a bizarre helter-skelter of twists, reveals, revelations, perfunctoy attempts to tie up loose ends, mind stretching resolutions for subplots and red herring characters; and some bug-eyed OTT acting all around.

It's as if the writers woke up one morning, realised there was only one episode left, and panicked. Suddenly there's a mad rush to reveal that she, he, they - anybody! - aren't what they seem, that events we thought happened didn't happen the way we thought they did, that THAT storyline actually had nothing to do with THIS storyline after all.

And wasn't it called THE BURNING GIRLS?? Mmmmm...

After meandering through 5 episodes of trope soup, Episode 6 is a manic joy.

I was sceptical about this show but wow it left my mind blown, very clever series and I most certainly did not see that huge twist coming in the last episode! I would go as far as saying this is the best series I have watched in a long time.

Loved the fact it had a very small but impressive cast, very cleverly produced and the writer should also take so much credit for writing a masterpiece.

Samantha Morton is one of my favourite actresses and she did not disappoint in this show, I was also super impressed with Conrad Khan, he played his role so well and he has a great future in front of him.

Samantha Morton is brilliant as always, but the messy sub-plots and indecisive supernatural story line create too many loose ends and unanswered questions.

The motivation of most of the various murderous and sadistic characters are not explained, nor are most of their actions.

The supernatural visions of burning girls, ghosts, the dead rabbit / bird theme, lights going out and doors banging shut, and the cursed village plot in general, is clearly designed to build suspense and keep viewers watching, but then is left dangling with zero explanation, other than a brief moral subplot.

This is a decent rainy Sunday slow burner with a bit of a twist, but overall has a frustrating finish and is ragged around the edges.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. It started off over the top hammy with the eerie music and flashes of ghosts. Also far too many weird 'horror' scenes that turned out to be Morton's character having a nightmare. But it was fun.

Then it turned murder mystery and forgot about the supernatural stuff. That was good too, but far too many parts were glossed over or didn't really make sense.

It's as if they came up with a lot of great story ideas, decided to throw them all in the pot but just starting ignored them when they started getting too convoluted.

I'm off to read the book now. Maybe that'll shine some light on the whole thing.

TLDR? Very enjoyable and watchable but expect it to end up in a way that makes you go, 'Uh okay, but what about...' and then head onto IMDB to look at trivia in the hopes that'll fill in some gaps.