An t-Eilean

This was such an exciting prospect - a flagship Gaelic drama, set in one of the most dramatic, atmospheric landscapes in the world, and told in the poetic and evocative Gaelic language. It should have been a game-changer but instead we got a series of creaking old cliches that would have been out-of-date 20 years ago.

As a murder-mystery it completely failed, with glaring plot holes and a laughably-inept police investigation.

The dialogue was just Daytime Soap-level melodrama translated into Gaelic. Out of four hours of dialogue there's literally zero quotable lines. There are also zero memorable characters because there's no character development. The dialogue is largely there to help grind out the plot, not to reveal any character depth, detail or colour.

The landscape shots are stunningly-beautiful but we can see amazing Hebridean landscape footage on youtube without having to sit through awful drama.

What's so frustrating about this show is that as the first big budget Gaelic drama, it should have been bulletproof, with a script stress-tested to destruction (especially a murder-mystery which requires meticulous plotting).

So much of the dreadful dialogue, tired tropes and plotting errors shouldn't have made it beyond the first draft. But they did, and because of that it will be a long time before another major Gaelic drama gets made, and that's a great shame.

Beautifully shot, scripted and acted - a really fabulous and gripping 4 part series. Definitely worth watching. Warning - addictive and hard to watch only one episode at a sitting.

If you watch this you may feel sorry for the lack of joy emanating from some of the less effusive reviews . Each to their own of course - but if you enjoyed murder mystery series as a youngster, if you remember the early days of intrigue enjoying something like Agatha Christie, smiled at Bergerac or Inspector Morse - then this is the modern (better) equivalent.

Being shot in Gaelic and the subtitles adds something new and different to a non-Gaelic speaker and far from detracting, somehow adds authenticity and draws you in. Great watch. Well done the BBC for commissioning this.

This is a rare flop in the otherwise dependable genre of 'tartan noir' police procedurals.

At first glance, it wound appear to have all the right ingredients of a satisfying spiel in the mould of 'Shetland'. The addition of Gaelic dialogue is an intriguing touch.

Unfortunately, the whole production is a major disappointment. The story is implausible, beset with tropes and cliches you'll have seen a hundred times before. The script is mechanistic, the characters boring and the acting wooden.

Even on catch-up, with the ability to recap the action (such as there is), the story is disjointed, confused and exhausting to follow. The editing in particular is a frantic machine-gun barrage of shots that make it impossible to keep up with the subtitles for the split-second they appear on screen. The frequent switches between English and Gaelic in the same conversation are an added struggle to follow.

Despite the copious drone footage, there is no sense whatsoever of place and we learn nothing about the unidentified locations we are flying over.

None of these criticisms would necessarily be a problem on their own, but taken together they add up to a series that is more effort than enjoyment and ultimately difficult to recommend.

As someone said before, the lead acress is a miscast. Totally wrong for the role and makes everything else completely unbelievable. The lead actress is so wrong as a police and has the same confused and scared expression all the time.

Plot doesn't hold up and by episode 4 you never really care anymore.

With a better cast and a better script it might had a chance to be good but now it is just off.

It is boing and boring.

It's a no from me and I am Sorry to say that I do not recommend it...

I give it 4 stars because of the interesting and beautiful scenery and the gaelic languange being used.

Seems like an intriguing premise, but the lead actress is totally miscast. She looks like a scared high school student plus she can't act. She has only one facial expression, which is a childlike wide-eyed stare. It's also more than a bit strange how everybody switches between English and Gaelic as they speak. Perhaps this is real, but it makes watching it and reading subtitles rather challenging. Also, why is it that Brtish television wants so desperately to make lead characters gay? And they make a point of creating scenes where this is suddenly revealed through a same-sex kiss, as if to say to the audience, "aha, bet you didn't see that coming!" It's getting tired and old.