Cleddau

I am writing this after s1 (hopefully, there will be more to come).

As a lover of the great but underrated Hinterland (Y Gwyll in Welsh), I am so pleased to see so many of the cast (13 in all) reapper here.

It has been produced in the same style, dark and brooding with two leading characters with a past and a lot of undelying tension.

I have seen quite a few welsh dramas but have to say I didn't know Elen Rhys as she only had small roles in Hinterland, Hidden and Keeping Faith but I will certainly be checking out her other work as i did enjoy her performance here, There's a great, reliable support cast here. I do like Hannah Daniel (looking like a Welsh Niamh Algar) in this role after being a bit let down with her in Keeping Faith and the ubiquitos Elery Thomas is here again, showing another string to her bow.

The only let down for me is the ending but hopefully this is just leading us into a second series.

Just finished the English language version. Starts well, good cast, typical but credible murder mystery. Sadly many of these shows seem to be written without planning a proper ending so get lost in the woods. After a dozen red herrings it becomes obvious who dunnit. Why? There's only one person left! The ending is utterly ludicrous. Save your time by watching something better. The cast is excellent and do their very best to rescue this turkey from the mess it sinks to. You can actually see mike's in advance what's going to happen next. I feel sorry for the actors who have to wade through this bilge.

It's very hard to carry a murder mystery over 6 episodes unless the script is great, and this script is far from it. In my experience Welsh crime dramas are glacially slow, it's a slow and painful process keeping up with them.

It is so full of cliches, like a bad American police procedural. A DI is brought back to her former station to work on a case similar to one she helped solve 10 years before. She teams up with her former colleague/lover. From there it's downhill full of cliches. Every new piece of evidence sends them down another rabbit hole. This isn't a "Grace" or a "Vera" or any of the top British crime dramas.

Great cast members like Richard Harrington and Elen Rhys deserve better scripts. This should have been 3 separate crime stories, 2 episodes each and it would have been more successful.

I think that title quote paraphrases the late Tommy Docherty, and sums up this whole aimless and pointless effort. Richard Harrington very rapidly used up his full stock of ten facial expressions, at least two of which are 'confused', and it was downhill all the way from there.

I really can't believe I watched this right through to the end, and I think it was only for the Welsh. My work took me to that nation for some years, long long ago, and I made an effort to acquire a basic smattering of the language, so I was interested to hear it spoken again. But of course the dialogue was way too fast for me, and I was totally reliant upon the subtitles.

And what did I see? A convoluted story with more plot holes than a Swiss cheese, and incompetence upon incompetence from the two central police officers. As for the ending, the very final shot, well no, NO, NOOOOO!

I should give it one, but for the small enjoyment I had trying to follow the Welsh, so a very generous three out of ten.

Now go away, Harrington boyo, and don't come back, OK?

As a big fan of good TV crime, I found a lot to enjoy here. The series is both exciting, has good characters played by convincing actors and filmed in beautiful surroundings in Wales. The series has 6 episodes. For my part, I think the quality of the episodes was variable. It starts very exciting, nail-biting, creepy and a promising start. Halfway through the series, I fall off a bit. The story becomes more elaborate with a focus on not only the current case, but also murders far back in time. Then I think there is a lot of dialogue, investigation, back and forth. This at the expense of the excitement that I am looking for in such series. But by all accounts, this one is far above the majority of crime TV. It just doesn't manage to keep me on my toes the whole way.