wms59

Made the mistake of choosing this for a family movie night. I found the whole thing dragged interminably along and should have had tighter direction, and losing around an hour in the process.

It was interesting that when discussing it with the rest of my family afterwards, we all had similar thoughts on the script and direction.

Interestingly we thought the acting was, with a few exceptions, fine, it was just the material they had been given that was suspect.

Although we realise that a main thrust of the story was on the family dynamics as they come to terms with recent events, it did seem as though actors such as Martin Freeman were woefully under-utilised; to the point where they could have been written out altogether with no change to the story..

We have only watched the first season so far, and although I was concerned that the direction was slow and dragging, the story is growing on me.

Something that was obvious to us very early on however, was that many of the actors were sleepwalking through their parts, compared with David Tennant. No matter the situation or which other actors were on the screen, he managed to steal every scene with his shear acting talent. It will be interesting to see how the characters develop without his input.

So, I will persevere with this and sincerely hope I will not be disappointed with future episodes.

This story may actually have worked, if they had found a cast that could actually act.

The main character, in particular, made me think I was watching a wooden stringed puppet.

That, and the strange pauses when in the midst of some urgent scene, rendered the thing sadly unsatisfying.