Gubby-Allen

Beautiful advert for the Orkneys with some wonderful shots, brilliantly acted and a compelling story but it really struggled to fill the length of the film and the latter third dragged.

It also flipped back and forth far too frequently the longest stretch of uninterrupted dialogue couldn't have topped a minute. There is a lot of piecing the plot together yourself, with little dialogue, on the way to London, back up in the Highlands again.

Absolutely worth a watch and you are better for it, scenery, performance and story all bring you in but it drags and jumps too much to leave a lasting memory.

It is a review solely of the first series of ten episodes which is as much as I could get through.

It is pretty dull and uneventful ordinarily, however relative to the amount of praise and awards which it has received it is the single widest gulf of how awful a show is, in comparison to the acclaim.

It drags along with absolutely nothing happening. You could watch the first 30 minutes of Episode one, with the last 30 minutes of Episode ten and follow it fine. If you gave someone an outline of the show, then were asked after 7-8 episodes in. "What has happened so far?" It is a struggle to come up with any answer.

It bares similarities to Big Brother or Love Island, maybe accounting for the popularity. What little plot there is, appears made up as it goes along and seemed to have been decided by drawing character names out of a hat and three of four of them one episode will slyly conspire to overthrow the company whilst a few others will contest it. Two episodes later, it is the exact same plot again but a different crop of names have been pulled out to fulfill different roles without any logic or explanation why.

None of the traditional traits of popular TV are found. No twists, no cliffhanger endings to tempt you to watch the next episode. Just the same storyline recycled with different characters. They are the most loathsome group of characters ever put into a show, which I know is exactly the point and they do it well. There is quite literally, not a half decent, mildly likeable one amongst them. Some and their habits are absolutely grotesque, children beaten and it is surprisingly a 15 certificate. The core of them are a combination of drug addicts, sex workers or both, which must be a ridiculously extreme portrayal. It is a real stretch of reality that in 2018, none of their actions, comments etc have ever been recorded or leaked. It is unique for a show not to have a single character to root for or subconsciously watch to see succeed.

The dialogue is mumbled along, Cox seems to only have about three stock phrases, one of which is **** off. There have been the same conversations with the same characters, three or four times over in ten episodes. Connor and his girlfriend about their status, Roman with anyone, Shiv and Tom's discussions occur over and over again.

I really cannot find a redeeming quality to keep watching beyond the first series. I am all for giving films that start slowly, a bit of time to get going. Even a couple of episodes for a TV show. But if a soap opera cannot engage after ten hours then it is hard to envisage going back to it.

1/10 for the first five episodes, 3/10 for the next five so 2/10 overall.