markfranh

My wife jokingly said to me after we watched this something along the lines of "if you make me watch the third episode of this rubbish, we're getting a divorce.

I agreed. Not with the divorce bit. About it being rubbish.

One of the worst things I've seen out of British television in a long time.

We watched the first episode and were not impressed but that's often what happens with the first episode in a series. It takes time to establish characters and perhaps that's why the first episode was so poor; a lot of time was wasted establishing character. I sensed there was more to it than that but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Surely it could only improve.

Big mistake. It didn't improve.

It was just awful. Worse than the first. The plot all over the place and hard to follow with so many twists and turns and coincidences it was just stupid at times.

I read a lot of professional reviews of programmes and base whether or not to watch a series based to some extent on what the pros think of something. I thought I'd seen a review of episode 1 a few weeks ago that indicated it might be "promissing". It wasn't particularly positive in its wording but I thing "promissing" was a fair summation.

After watching episode 2 last night, I by chance received a review from a regular reviewer in my inbox this morning which was only about episode 2. Let me just copy and paste in one key bit here from a review that was far from complimentary:

"And yet despite the familiarity, there are tonal problems here - the cast ham it up and sometimes play it for laughs, and the next moment swear their heads off and are confronted with some darkness. It doesn't all quite fit together."

100% agree. Tonal problems? Doesn't fit together? Absolutely to both. This is a series that doesn't know what it wants to be. If they'd played it for straight laughs all the way and wrote it that way, it would have worked. If they'd tried to play it serious throughout, it MIGHT have worked (but not convinced of that really). But what they did? It does NOT WORK.

The reviewer gave it 2.5 stars out of 5 which is the lowest I've ever seen him give anything and I even thought that was generous.

Summing it up when discussing it with my wife when the threat of divorce was put aside, we agreed on the main problem. Phyllis Logan as Cora Felton.

We thought her performanc and character just felt all wrong. I love Phillis in roles I've previously seen her in. She was great in Guilt. All the way back to Lovejoy in the 80s, just thought her perfect in that.

But here? Just not convincing and I think that due as much to the material and her not knowing what to do with it as her own performance being "off".

If an actor doesn't believe in the words she is uttering or the story (and she wasn't the only one here), how is the audience supposed to go along with it?

Absolutely beyond me how another reviewer here gave this an 8. I think my 2 just about right.

IN a word:

Dreadful.

My wife and I only just started watching old episodes of this series a few weeks ago. We're enjoying it even though it is pretty routine stuff and nothing particular new here.

As is the norm for most British TV series, the lead detective is in a failed relationship (the only exception to this rule where the lead is either in a failed or unusual relationship or at least disfunctional that we could think of is MIdsomer Murders). The #2, of course, has issues of her own. Nothing at all out of the ordinary and all very predictable.

Normally I wouldn't bother even reviewing this but because one episode has one of the stupidest plot holes I"ve ever come across I thoght it worth writing about. Both of us (my wife and myself) immediately spoke up and said something like "WHAT!?" when it was shown on the screen as it just was idiotic.

I won't give too much away as this really isn't a spoiler. I won't even mention the episode but here is the basic scenario.

A woman goes missing. Her car is tracked to another part of London and found. She was clearly the passenger (injured) while someone else (the kidnapper perhaps? Say no more!) was driving. No sign of anyone. No body. Just a bit of blood and a locket. However, there is a lot of water on the passenger side of the car at the feet of where the woman would have been sitting.

A few moment thoughts on that one ...

... and our #2 detective suddenly pauses mid-step and blurts out the conclusion, "we passed a lake on the way here ..."

Sure enough, they search the lake and find the body of the woman in the lake.

So if the kidnapper/murderer/whatever drives to the lake, removes the body from the car, drags the body to the lake, dumps the body in the lake, returns to the car, drives it to where he/she abandons it ....

... why on earth would there be any water in the car at the foot of the passenger seat where the missing and now found dead woman was sitting and thus allowing the detective to conclude the body was in the lake?

It was ridiculous.

And so avoidable if the writers could have just used their brains to write around it.

E.g. Having located the car, the police consult CCTV to track the route of the car. There happens to be a camera on the road passing the lake. The car is seen to turn off the road and disappears in the direction of the lake only to reappear 10 minutes later. Conclusion: the lake needs to be searched.

Problem solved and it could have been covered in maybe 20 seconds of editing.

But ... no ... we have to have one of the stupidest plot holes in television history.

We'll continue viewing the rest as it airs but, geez, there had better not be any more "bloopers" like this one or we shall soon give up.

I was a fan of the Parnell Hall novels, both his "Puzzle Lady" series as well as the PI "Stanley Hastings" books. Always looked for them at the local library and snapped them up whenever a new one came out. Going back 20 years in my memory but enjoyed them all.

It's always "puzzled" me (pun intended) that it's taken so long for them to be made into a television series and now when one is made that the setting has been moved from the USA to the UK. Nothing wrong with that of course.

In any case, I was looking forward to this when it was announced that Phyllis Logan would be starring in the role as it seemed a good casting.

However ...

the result is disappointing.

And disappointing for the unfortunate reason that it seems to have been made on a very low budget.

The script follows the first novel but it just all felt like it had been cobbled together and no effort had been made to polish it or have others read it and make the changes thatwere needed to be made to the script to clean it up.

Dialogue often didn't quite feel right and it often felt that even the actors didn't believe in the lines and if they don't believe the lines, how are they supposed to deliver them convincingly?

And then we have the leaps in the plot that don't quite work. Cora gets the news that one of her bridge partners has gone missing. So she and her niece and the reporter decide to go looking for her. And then the immediate jump to what seems to be an isolated viewpoint on the outskirts of town at night where they discover the missing woman's car? The first place anybody would look of course (note sarcasm). It just didn't work.

Annoying little things too like when the third puzzle clue is discovered (in the parking lot), the clue is read by the group and the reporter immediately comes up with the answer to the clue. It would have been nice if the viewers could have learned what the clue actually said first so we could have had a moment to think about it but, no, all we heard was the answer. Small point, but just shows the lack of thinking that went into cleaning up the script.

Even the budget for the cast must have been tight because once you go past the four main characters, almost everybody else that appeared just felt like they were in an amateur production. The mayor, in particular, sounded like he might have been better in my local town's annual amateur production featuring our town's residents as "actors"; not in a major tv production. Could they not afford someone who could deliver the lines convincingly? It felt like he had just learned the lines and was reciting them in a rehearsal rather them delivering for the screen. To be fair, with the lines he had being a real cliche, maybe it was his frustration with the script that was the real problem.

Filming time must have been limited as well as there were scenes that really should have been reshot but clearly the director said "we don't have time, that will have to do." At one point the cameraman is tracking the action and clearly briefly stumbles so the camera momentarily is not focussed on the actor and well off centre before he recovers and the camera finds Cora again. Just a fraction of a second but noticable and in a proper production, the director would have said "do it again" but not here.

Most modern productions use steadycams so that there is no motion with the camera as the cameraman moves around but not here. The actors routinely aren't quite in the centre of the shot as the cameraman struggles to move smoothly. I guess they couldn't afford modern equipment?

In another scene, a leaf unfortunately falls across Cora's face as she is walking through the cemetary. Sure, this happens in real life, but in a proper production the director would have had the actors run through that bit again but it was allowed to stand as it was a distraction.

In yet another, lights in a darkened room at night don't match the torch that it being used and clearly something had gone wrong with the lighting but "nevermind, close enough".

To the person whose review said this was just a concept taken from Ludwig. No, it wasn't. More the other way around. The Puzzle Lady was written over 25 years ago so it was more likely the writers of Ludwig stole the idea from Parnell Hall.

As to the reviewer who wasn't convinced a crossword setting (even though she isn't!) older woman solving murders could be any way realistic. How is this any worse than Ludwig where a missing detective's identical twin brother steps in and assumes his role in solving crimes? How realistic is that? Or how about one Father Brown who week after week shows the local policeman to be incapable of solving murders? Or one Jessica Fletcher, author, who for years showed up the local police in a smaill town in Maine? Need I go on?

Anyway, enough said. I could say more but no need.

So much potential. So disappointing.