User reviews

I too was quite puzzled why they would make an English version of Outrageous Fortune. Needless to say I was quite shocked after watching the first 5 minutes of Honest only to realize I was watching a remake of Outrageous Fortune. I am a HUGE fan of the original Outrageous Fortune (filmed in New Zealand) and watched the entire series (6 seasons) when it was on Hulu (unfortunately it is no longer available on Hulu). It was one of my favorite shows ever!! There is prequel to Outrageous Fortune called Westside (also filmed in New Zealand) which has had two seasons so far. I am hoping Hulu will pick this up soon so I can watch it. As for Honest, it is a little difficult to watch if you are a fan of Outrageous Fortune. Having watched only one episode I am wondering how on earth they will pack 107 episodes of Outrageous Fortune into to just 6 episodes of Honest.

The New Zealand show Outrageous Fortune has had 3 good seasons.

The first being the best and funniest. However, watching 10 minutes of honest I can't understand why they had to remake this show. They weren't anywhere near the acting of the original, using the same story and plot.

English people speak English, NEW ZEALAND speaks English.. so why didn't they just buy the show and put it on TV in England.

Usually we get Korean, French, and Italian movies remade into English because, well I will quote someone who moaned to me, " I do not want to read subtitles ".

So , where is the excuse for a show from New Zealand.

Even worse...America. They remake everything out of the UK. Why can't they show English shows in America???

It would make sense if any of these remakes were any good. But they never are!

The original Outrageous Fortune NZ show is my favorite show of all time and this is a short version of season one. Worth a watch.

Cannot even get past episode 1 urgh absolutely rubbish, outrageous fortune is amazing and i do not know why they even tried to recreate just air original which is funny and engaging this is really bad. I am in uk and hate this, no one can do this show justice other than robyn malcolm,grant bowler, antonia prebble, antony starr, shioban marshall and frank whitton may he rest in peace, westside the prequel is equally good, thought i would try watching beecause of how much loved original will try watching usa version scoundrels but reckon it will be equally bad, don't waste your time honestly haha.

I haven't seen the NZ version; sadly it hasn't been shown in the UK to my knowledge. I wish it had been broadcast so I could compare it to this.

Amanda Redman is as good as ever, but some of the supporting actors are absolutely terrible, particularly Mrs Hong, who is either a NZ or Australian actress, and embarrassingly bad. A really, really poor actress who wouldn't even make the grade in a school production...you can only wonder how she got cast! A few too many stereotypes for my taste. The chemistry is good between the detective and Redman. There are some funny lines, but somehow it leaves me expecting more. Wish they had screened the original instead. We are so used to Australian programmes, I can't understand why they didn't show the NZ version, because everyone who has seen it raves about it, and we are left with second best.

Also, I don't know who is doing the make-up for this series, but they are a bit slap happy with the pancake - they all look like orange corpses. Very distracting especially on the detective.

Six episodes were obviously all that this series could muster. It is not difficult to see why since by episode 4, it had become very formula driven with stereotyped characters, the determined, family focused mother, the twin sons (one dimwitted), the sycophant daughter and the clever daughter. These played the same roles on a repetitive basis to the point of predictability. Having said that, it does have its moments but clearly not enough of them to warrant a second series.

The single actor playing both the twins is really technically badly done. One would think in this modern digital age, the technique used would not look like how it used to be done in the 1960s. I guess the budget had a lot to do with it. Anyway, overall, it's not a bad watch to pass the time.