Without Motive

We were delighted to catch the British series 'Without Motive' on AcornTV. It runs for 12 episodes, more or less in 2 parts (1-6 and 7-12). Ross Kemp, a talented actor, plays the main character Jack Mowbray, a police detective (and family man) tasked to a team out to catch a cold-blooded killer who appears to have attacked several young women. The team runs into problems (not the least of which is: too many chiefs) and finally gets their man by Episode 6. Episode 7-12 deal with the aftermath of the court case, including mishandling (or suppression) of evidence, and apparent copy-cat killings. The shows are very suspenseful and are as much about the lives of the characters, as they are about the solving of the crime. Highly-recommended viewing, but I certainly wouldn't want to wait a week between episodes: so stream it from Acorn, or try to find the DVD set. We were hooked from the beginning.

Watched in lockdown over two nights on Britnox. Aged very well. The script writing is very deceptive. It might seem to veer off track from police linear dramas, but it's actually a fine cross-section of the muddle under-resourced and non-glossy police centres go through.

There are one or two plot holes that make the outcome weaker than it should have been.

Ross Kemp as Jack Mowbray is stellar. His years on the soaps seem to have given him the timing and emotion practice needed as he gets a chance to bring it up large to his character.

A well-layered and tense watch.

Grizzly, dark and gloomy but highly watchable. Viewers get to see all the work the police have to do to try to catch a crafty serial killer, how they cope with the stress of failure, public opinion and lots of overtime, and why careers can sink because of a single case. I had misgivings about the development of the main female characters - a policeman's wife who has a very odd attitude about the case, and two police women who do some very dumb things. I found it difficult to accept these characterizations all in one storyline to use as a catalyst and filler for subplots because the female victims, for the most part, were also negative stereotypes. Other than that, the acting is top notch, the clashing personalties in the police hierarchy are believable, and the construct of the serial killer provides some suspense because we don't see much about motivation or methods so we're left guessing. I was surprised by some aspects of the investigative process which led nowhere, the fact that the detectives had no blue light to put on their unmarked car during a car chase, and the idea that a local police official had a full time driver. But these were little bumps in the course of watching a basically good story play out.

I'd have given this a higher rating but the women characters are universally so awful! They're drunks and soul-sucking emotionalists, every one. This show seems to have been written by four men who have gone through life without ever meeting any women who are intelligent, serious, stable, and good at their jobs. Such women exist, so it would have been great to throw a few like that into the mix. You would think that women detectives at least would have more emotional balance and self-control than is depicted here.

This show isn't really a detective show with most of the screen time devoted to the family problems of detective Jack Mowbray and the politics within the police department. Not much time left for actual detective work. A lot of the dialogue is implausible and, particularly in the case of Jack's wife's reaction to the murder case and Jack's involvement in it, completely and painfully ridiculous. IMDB has this show with a 7.3 rating. It doesn't deserve anywhere near that high. My wife and I give it a 5.0. We skipped Season 2.