Clean Sweep

I enjoyed this, partly, I think, because I'd never seen an Irish police thriller before. The main plot was gripping and well acted. I thought the ending was very well executed and certainly doesn't need to imply a second series, as some reviewers have said.

On the negative side, I found the family soap opera a bit tedious. The stories with the three children had nothing to do with the main plot. It's as if there were two competing programme ideas and someone had the not-so-bright idea of putting them both into one.

The English police scenes did not ring true at all and the histrionic outburst near the end was bizarre. Why was the superintendent (?) in charge of the case referred to as the "commissioner". It made no sense. The accents weren't always quite right either.

Great to see a clever drama set in Ireland. Quality direction and acting. It was slow to start and episode one was probably the worst of the episodes but once the different layers of the drama and the interweaving stories start to reveal it becomes very good television.

I cannot understand the negative reviews of the main Irish newspapers, the critics seem to be looking for Scandinavian noir or an art house production. This is none of those things, it is a detective series with a family drama overlap, it is a difficult thing to marry but for all the occasional incoherences I think it works very effectively.

On the plus side the lead actress was brilliant,a shame that does not apply to the rest of the cast. The two youngest kids were fine but the older son can't act to save his life,also the female detective based in London was portrayed like a cartoon character. I found the plot involving the characters from England to be confusing and there were times i did not know what was going on. Will be interesting to see whether or not there is a second series,but not really sure if it warrrants one. Overall it just about held my interest but there are far better series out there to watch,but if you have nothing better to see it is not a complete waste of time.

My Review - Clean Sweep Streaming on SBS on Demand

My Rating 7/10

Clean Sweep is an Irish six-part thriller television series created by Gary Tieche and starring Irish actress Charlene McKenna in the role of Shelly Mohan a housewife and mother of three children .

Her apparent life of calm domesticity is turned upside down when her chaotic past and criminality comes home to haunt her.

Shelly makes an irreparable decision and commits a horrific act in fact a murder when Charlie Lynch, a man from her troubled past, contacts her.

Then when her husband Jason who just happens to be the Garda detective assigned to the murder case Shelly has to retrieve incriminating evidence at the crime scene.

Jason Mohan the husband played by Barry Ward is a womaniser who is never at home and romantically involved with his partner Fiona. He thinks if he can crack this case a promotion to Sergeant is guaranteed.

I found the story at times far too improbable to be true but it's a well acted and well produced series .

If you can get past its many credulity-stretching twists and its frequent excursions into the just plain silly area of to many convenient coincidences I think you'll enjoy Clean Sweep.

Created and written by Gary Tieche my main criticism of his otherwise reasonable script is the fact that why would anyone with a past like Shelly Mohan marry a Garda detective in the first place then after committing murder or was it self defence gain access to her incriminating evidence .

I've given it a 5, which feels about right. The production values are good, likewise the cinematography. And there's just enough content to keep the viewer engaged. Only just, though.

Essentially, this is a prime example of a Netflix serial that's been over-extended, and thereby stretched thin and a bit see-through. Four episodes, maybe even three, would have been enough. There's far too much drag in each episode, sub-plots that don't really add anything, and not really too much of a story to begin with. Also, the budgetary constraints imposed from having to fill six episodes were, to my mind, reflected in the choice of cast. The lead actor aside - she gave an excellent performance - most of the other performances were so-so, a bit second-rate, and in one particular case laughably awful (the London DI). Maybe, though - to give the actors their due - it could also be down to the fact that most of the characters were flat, cardboard-cut-out, cliched and under-developed. This is down to the writer.

As I said in the title... it's okay if you've exhausted all other options. Don't expect anything you haven't seen a dozen times before, though.