The Wives

Well, I wish I had looked at imdbs rating for this drama before I started watching it and I would have saved several hours of my life. It's very average at best. There's nothing wrong with the individual actors, it's just not very well written, so they struggle from a get-go. I actually thought that this was going to be a bit of a comedy with 3 meddling, middle-aged ladies, pretending to be detectives. For a family who was supposedly close with three brothers in a business they have a huge amount of secrets that suddenly come out of the woodwork , just not very believable!!!!!

The only thing that saves this are the beautiful landscapes of Malta.

I watched this because I liked the premise of it. Three sisters-in-law, on holiday in Malta, turn amateur sleuths investigate the mysterious diseappearance of the fourth sister-in-law from the year before. They are aided and abetted by their niece (the disappeared sister-in-law's daughter) and eventually by the new girlfriend of the diseappeared lady, Turns out everyone has secrets (uncluding the theree wives) and a motive for wanting the disappeared lady out of the way. And who is the myterious stranger, the divorced wife meets via a dating app and how is he connected to the disappearance?

Although billed as a mystery thriller it comes across more as a comedy thriller or a black comedy. This does actually work well. The best part for me is the relationship between the three wives (making wisecracks, falling in and out with each other and bickering and getting themselves into scrapes). Although you're made to initially disike the new girlfriend you do eventually warm to her, especially with her outsiders aspect on the familys relationships and a lot of her out downs towards the others.

A similar attempt is made to create the same kind of relationship between the three brothers (the husbands) but they aren't as good actors and it doesn.t work as well,. Likewsie neither does having one of the brothers perpertually overseas and therefore neer seen.

And then there's the ending which I am going to just decribed as.......poor.

Entertaining, worth a watch.

I started watching this as background/rainy day at home, It is filmed in Malta which is nice for some of the locations and background, The plot is quite loose and at times difficult to keep engaged with, The main reason I was able to watch the whole series is because I had created my own fantasy of Tanya Branning, Mel Owen and Kim Campbell being on a girls holiday together in some sort of Eastenders and Waterloo Road alternate reality which made it a little more enjoyable watching as if they where these characters and not the Morgan wives, although to be honest I quickly lost track of who was married to who.

This is not a perfect series but I loved the acting. Angela Griffin is an underrated British actress and I thought her performance was very believable. Tamzin Outhwaite is perfectly cast as a "cougar". She's beautiful and believable as a 40 plus a woman. I was disappointed with Jo Joyner. I found her acting stilted self-conscious and unbelievable. It's a run-of-the-mill story. Somebody goes missing on a holiday but what's unbelievable is all the friends and family go back and live their lives like it's never happened. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it and I wanted to love it. If you like a story with no conclusion and no promise of a second series, watch it. If you like everything tied up in knots like I do give it a miss.

Avoid this series like the plague, absolutely terrible script, unfortunately the acting is even more terrible. At no time does the plot make any sense, it seems to consist of quaffing large glasses of red wine, every other comment being about sex then a big row then everyone all friends again , and so it goes on around and around.

It takes about one minute into the first episode to realise this is a must miss, it made me miss the days of the test card being screened.

Anyway that's enough of the goods points !

The only plus side to it is that as it is a channel 5 production it means it didnt come out of license fee money.