Cleddau

We watch all the UK detective series and tried this because Richard Harrington is always pretty good since we first saw him on Hinterland. And he's good here too. Can't say it's aterribly original plot, with the reliable blend of false identities, family secrets, and discord between the male/female detective leads. But it held our interest well enough. However the last 30 seconds of the series, the thing which gives the show its name, is just preposterous. It simply couldn't happen based on what we'd just seen for 51 minutes. Not unless the entire criminal justice system has been ignored. Wales has to do better than that.

We like so much British TV we thought this would be good. It has Erin Rhys and she was great in The Mallorca files and there were other competent actors in the cast. The downfall begins in the "Welsh noir" of the writing and kinda twisty romantic sidestory and the plot of the murders. The colors and scenes in the filming are too dark or somber,, The sidestory in the end becomes the main plot and the solution to the mystery becomes more clouded or uncertain and for these reasons it leaves one very unsatisfied. It is similar to the Welsh series Hinterland or Y GWYLL which also started with promise and interesting quality but just got depressing. We were let down by the ending and twists in the storyline and abruptness of the finish and lack of resolutions.

Brits are pros at this - well-executed police procedurals. You can rely on them to have solid plotting and carefully planned dramatic arcs, capable actors, and three-dimensional characters with realistically grounded problems.

I enjoyed that the pacing wasn't rushed - however, the series could've been an hour shorter. (It annoys me that it appears "compulsory" nowadays to have at least 6 episodes for one story.) There were some unnecessary coincidences, and to be fair, all and all the series wasn't really that groundbreaking.

However, it was still a good binge with lovely Welsh scenery to boot.

This is what you would expect from the BBC and others.

Usual array of suspects and diversions. Worth watching and probably not for watching in a binge, as you want time to digest.

The usual use of the weather to set scenes and move the plot on.

There is good complexity of character development and the dialogue is believable.

I do wonder if there is always doubt about those higher up,.

And of course the bloke with the glasses is a bit mysterious.

I do wish they made them call "Taser, taser , taser" when they use them, but you can't have everything.

Can you?

And no CGI or AI.

Nice.

And satisfying at the end.

It's very hard to carry a murder mystery over 6 episodes unless the script is great, and this script is far from it. In my experience Welsh crime dramas are glacially slow, it's a slow and painful process keeping up with them.

It is so full of cliches, like a bad American police procedural. A DI is brought back to her former station to work on a case similar to one she helped solve 10 years before. She teams up with her former colleague/lover. From there it's downhill full of cliches. Every new piece of evidence sends them down another rabbit hole. This isn't a "Grace" or a "Vera" or any of the top British crime dramas.

Great cast members like Richard Harrington and Elen Rhys deserve better scripts. This should have been 3 separate crime stories, 2 episodes each and it would have been more successful.