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Humphrey seems like a bigger dork than he did on DiP, his crew seem more surly and insubordinate than the St. Marie gang (with a young cop who's as unworldly and inept as the lead!), the older women seem to go out of their way to be disagreeable...and while I get that DI Goodman's klutzy eccentricities can be wearing? This interpretation of Martha makes me wonder if he's not perpetually doomed to disappointment in his love life!

I've tried several episodes, and the series just isn't clicking for me in the way DiP did. I don't think it's just the location change to the UK countryside-I think it's that all these people are Martha's family or people she grew up with, but it doesn't feel like her knowledge is in any way helpful to Humphrey's work as a police detective. It might have worked better if where they ended up was a new place for them both so they had separate adjustments to make....

Aside from the pleasure of seeing Jamie Bamber aging into a silver fox after all the "Fat Lee Adama" jokes the last few years of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, this series didn't really hold my attention, and the mysteries seem kind of blah.

I really wanted to give this movie one star, but I have to be fair - the director Peter James Iengo finished it and got it distributed. I've worked on a number of horrible shot-on-video or shot-in-16mm would-be "features" that never even got completed, so props to Iengo for finishing a 100-minute video "movie" and getting it out there for people to marvel at the largely-horrible cinematography (there are a couple scenes early on that look impressively professional, like the opening scenes of a LAW & ORDER episode - but from there it's shot on home camcorder time by your Dad!), the horrendous "artistic" lighting, the audio sounding like it was recorded off the on-camera mic, and the editing that makes the story even more confusing than it already was.

Best of all is footage of Producer/Director/Writer/Camera Operator/Editor Iengo comparing PARTNERS to Michael Mann's HEAT! Be sure to watch that part ....

For my money, STAR TREK: THE LOWER DECKS is the only NuTREK series that even feels like STAR TREK, rather than...whatever else that is which Alex Kurtzman et al are dumping on Paramount+. It's great to see a show with flawed but likeable characters, exploring not-so-strange new worlds with lives and civilizations we already know about, and cleaning up after those who've boldly gone where no one has gone before.

Setting the series on a smaller, older ship (the USS CERRITOS, a "California-Class" starship) that's easily outpowered and outgunned, never really expected to do anything important or dangerous, but still has that Classic TREK spirit turned out to be a real smart move, because nobody expects the CERRITOS to show up at any major events or battles except as support, and to get out of the way when things get too hot. Even so, that still means the CERRITOS is often dealing with a lot of potentially dangerous (in a humorous way, of course!) situations.

Season 1 was a bit uneven as the writers worked out all the characters - our main cast, alien races and guest stars from the TREK Universe. Everybody's a bit more comically exaggerated - for instance, I can't see the Will Riker that spent a decade as Captain Picard's Number One being quite as gleefully reckless with the lives of his subordinates as this series (and Jonathan Frakes) plays him, nor did the Pakleds seem quite as persistently stupid and easily duped.

But by now everybody's settled into heightened versions of themselves, with our main cast in particular showing their strengths as well as their humorous weaknesses. You see that Mariner comes by her skating-on-the-edge attitude naturally, as Captain Freeman's a lot like her with a couple decades' more experience under her belt. You can see that Boimler has what it takes to grow into a calm, diplomatic commanding officer like Jean-Luc Picard someday, and that Rutherford and Tendi are one shove away from becoming lovers and eventually a Power Couple like Riker and Troi.

It never forgets it's a comedy, but STAR TREK: THE LOWER DECKS also never forgets it is, first and formost, STAR TREK....