LW-08854

An early Rick Stein series filmed around his hometown in Cornwall. The best aspects of the programme are showing the life of Padstow back in 1995, the lives of the fishermen working there. There's a lovely feel to it, coming across as so authentic and real and shots of people on the beach seem to reveal a slower more relaxed life where distravtions weren't constantly sought. The recipes are quite good, there's a range of obviously fish recipes we are shown. We also get tiny glimpses into his family life too.

The programme has a softer gentler feel in its music and look compared to some of the more in your face programmes out there.

The main drawbacks of the show are some of the filler taking up the time.

Endless endless shots of his dog for example doing absolutely nothing but just sat around. Lord only knows why they thought it would be so interesting to the viewer...... There's also possibly a bit much of Rick rambling a bit about things and the series lacks a bit of sense of a journey having come to an end.

Overall though the passion in communicating a love of the sea is very effectively brought home to you.

Overall a very strong and compelling series. Alec Guinness is superb as the methodical relentless spymaster who plays the detective trying to piece together a new mystery. There's some level of making this a little more cinematic than Tinker Taylor Solider Spy with a slightly grander less claustrophobic setting including more European locations. The rest of the cast are all pretty terrific. Rather than focusing of simple good v evil themes the series instead explores the weaknesses the various characters exhibit. My only real issue with the series overall is the main character himself remains pretty aloof and distanced, we never really get a sense of what is that drives him and the scenes with his wife are the only real glimpse of him doing anything except his work.

In summary though a very compelling well crafted series.

There's no denying the power of this true story and this programme obviously had a big impact. I also thought the cast were generally pretty good, Toby Jones is always terrific, even when he spends half the run length in his dressing gown on the telephone to people it still works well. What I did start to roll my eyes at was how contrived and cliched a lot of the dialogue was and the general script overall. Toby Jones sounds less like a real man than someone reading a Hollywood script, its just way too polished. Character introductions are handled pretty clumsily with huge exposition dumps like its the Da Vinci Code or something. "Yes i know who you are, this is your job title, these are your previous job titles, these are your personality traits." The delivery of key revelations also has to take place while characters are always driving, laptops randomly have internet connections in the middle of nowhere, I guess it would be too realistic for people to be you know at work or home when these things happen.

The court showdown of course involves the counsel representing the post office to be made a fool of time after time after time by the postmasters giving evidence, while those for the post office of course squirm. Oh dear..... Paula Vennels is constantly appearing on the TV too to promote the post office, it's just not remotely believable to think the news channels were that interested in interviewing her constantly at the time.

I do admire the intent of the programme but unfortunately it's just riddled with tropes and cliches that made me cringe so much. Horizon itself here is not so much a piece of software as a piece of hardware with a sinister blue light and creepy music.....What were they thinking? I was half expecting it to give an evil laugh or something as the camera slowly panned in on it.... Talk about dumbing down..