imdbusrr

Three disclaimers:

1. I have nothing but admiration for Julia Stiles' talent as an actor.

2. Because of the aforementioned, and really because of the acting cast generally, I'm glued to this series

3. Dmitri Leonidis deserves special mention for succeeding in conjuring a fictional character who is literally unsurpassed in my experience for annoyingness. What a dick.

Having said that, for real-life tools, Paul McGuiness has to take the gong/hammer/a good whack, anyway, for bastardising a production that should have been very special. Maybe he thinks that offending and disappointing one or two people such as Neil Jordan for instance, is trivial in comparison with the numbers of 'ordinary' viewers who may be non-offended enough to part with $.

The problem is that this 'ordinary' viewer is cringing. It's genuinely mortifying hearing some of the dialogue. It's throwing me right out of the experience, reminding me that there are many idiots in the world and that quite a few of them manage to get to places where they can do real harm- in this case to the screenplay/script/whatever you call it when it's a TV series.

I'd rather be writing happy positive reviews of stories I love, but the waste of talent here has me sad, and there is a need to make it known that this isn't good enough.

Once again, it has to be said: If you're a smart producer, you'll be able to make a thing of high quality that the masses will love. FIND A WAY NEXT TIME, DAMN YOU.