By Any Means

If you thought the BBC had been wrecking its own reputation enough recently, with its scandals at the top, it has now decided to have a go at its good name as a provider of Sunday night dramas. This series is dross - so bad it's almost good. Almost. With a few tweaks (removing the references to sex) it might be all right for Saturday early evening, when Dr Who is off the air, because children often like comics.

The premise is trashy and the details are clichéd. In the opening episode, Keith Allen reprises his old OTT Sheriff of Nottingham role, the comic baddie. If only he'd had moustaches, he would have been able to twirl them.

The BBC still has the wrong bosses. Give another tranche the customary payoff.

hello fellow TV show addicts,

please excuse a little explanation at the beginning. this is the first time i feel obligated to write here on IMDb. For quite a while i am overall a little disturbed by the sometimes extreme ratings for shows here on IMDb. As if there were only tens and zeros out there. In my opinion one needs to learn to differentiate a bit in his life. To moan about an overall decline in values, the wasting of taxpayers money and other exaggerated, demagogic ranting just because of a TV-show? Really? Over here in many of central Europe's other countries public service broadcasting is still your granny's TV. Limited to two Channels, broadcasting News, some decent reports and besides that mostly breakfast television, dusty whodunit repetitions and other things with a slightly relicish feel.

All that in mind back to topic:

This TV-show may not be another Luther, Sherlock nor any other high end, ingeniously plotted, exquisitely acted, overall gorgeous, critically acclaimed, kick-ass TV-marvel. but, does it need to be? does it want to?

i stumbled upon this new format by accident whilst looking for new things to watch. I liked the leading actor quite a lot on Luther, so i gave it a try. Thankfully before reading any reviews. A decent meal can leave you quite satisfied after a long day, doesn't it? And like that this show works for me. Yes, you can see right through the webbing of this show. The lead, the geek, the eye candy. Does a twist even deserve to be called a twist if you expected it right on time? rather not. The almost comical black and white views on good and bad.

But still, i liked it. I liked to be right. I liked getting nothing unexpected. I liked the boastful appearance of the characters. I liked the snappy comments and the predictable one-liners.

So if you're looking for something to clear your head, ease your mind or have a smile now and then. I encourage you to try it.

Not every nice evening has to feature a six-course dinner.

greetings from the deep south of Bavaria

Headed by a Miss G. Mckee a group of plucky young people bring "justice" to those previously denied it.

Actually the girl wants to just shoot them, but is told no we don't /can't do that sort of thing.

Why not? Oh yes, because then there would be no episode.

Of course the police can't win, the lawyers/criminal are too good, never make mistakes and of course there is the usual crooked cops helping the bad guys.

Of course after saying no we don't shoot people, later Plan B is said to be exactly that, kill him.

Our boys and girl bring down those nasty men . These clever youngsters use a lot of computers which of course involves "hacking".

By Any Means is a remake of Hustle with a slight alteration: they switched Hustle's con men who go after bad guys for a vague group of 'cops' who go after bad guys, and they have different actors.

It has the same writer and creator. The same core group of good guys who operate outside conventional rules. The exact same jump cut obsessed directing. The same desire to fool the audience with trickery. The same elaborate scheming. The attempts at being cool. The 'witty,' good looking protagonists.

And the same bad writing and sad storylines.

As other reviewers here I've never written a review for any series. But what I read here made me get behind the keyboard. Clearly all the low voters have never had to endure public or commercial TV in other European countries. This show is part of Britain's BBC heaven. En indeed not every show is entitled to occupy center stage in the programming, but it definitely has the right to get shown. It's different, funny and generally fast paced. The young actors must have had a good time making it, and I certainly have a good time watching it. Yes indeed, sometimes it is somewhat taxing on your intelligence, and I would hope that the writers are less easily satisfied at a next occasion. For instance that fact that in one episode our dream team apparently has never heard of mobile telephone triangulation, only to apply it themselves in the next episode as if they've never done anything else. Please writers, don't do this to us. It puts us off from a show that is otherwise a pleasure to watch when we got nothing better to do, and, as said, many shades better than the skin cringing stuff we see elsewhere on TV screens.

I have trawled the internet to see if a second season has been commissioned - but no answers found. After his very untimely demise in Luther, I was looking forward to Warren Browne in this, what seemed to be, black - ops - of - the - police - world drama. Browne was a much more sexy, controlling and formidable character than that of Sgt Ripley along side Idris Elba. He had a gun, slept around and killed people! Cool. I did think at times corny, but almost embraced it as the characters seemed to excel at playing corny anyway. I love the concepts: are they police/aren't they police ... the grey area ... shadowy characters that don't need to live by rules... criminals that were too far up the food chain (and there own arses) to think they were ever going to be caught. I think this series deserves another run to see if it can mature and grow on the critics. There is a place for this type of genre as there really isn't anything else like it from UK at the moment. Give it a chance - I think it has the potential!