The Deep: aux frontières des abysses

I've never been too fond of underwater/submarine movies, James Cameron's The Abyss movie from 1989 being a wonderful exception. BBC's The Deep explores similar territory to Abyss... What the heck is down there? Excellent sets, colors & moods with a fantastic cast.

James Nesbitt is in my top five UK character actors and though he is hard-pressed to top his brilliant Hyde/Jekyll in the mini-series "Jekyll" he once again brings a depth to his role that most can't even begin to touch.

I first became aware of the beautiful Minnie Driver from the sadly cancelled series The Riches (with Eddie Izzard)and every moment she is on screen in The Deep is sheer delight.

After three episodes The Deep is a tense, exciting, slightly sci-fi drama that once again places the BBC in the top slot along with HBO.

Highly recommended IMHO!

this series is inspired by the film of the same title, but starts out as flawed as the original film ends.

what else can i say. this series uses poor c.g. to amuse a somatose audience, and uses filler dialog in the same way.

whoever put this series together deserves a good old fashioned trip to the wood shed.

it has few plot points, obviously filled between with incongruous character reactions and stupid dialog which prompt time-filling conflicts, which stretches this tripe from a ninety minute show, into a British series length.

i was insulted by the watching, but unfortunately i kept viewing to see if it would get better or worse. the good news is it didn't get any worse. it played mediocre all the way through.

This mini series was to my mind a complete waste of time and money.

The series started off reasonably well, a decent amount of mystery, a few likable characters and a group of actors whose previous work I have loved. It all went down hill pretty soon, I had no respect for the characters who were more concerned with their own personal agenda's and social problems than with the mission in hand. The script had a couple of amusing moments but for the most part dropped and I was able to predict with absolute accuracy which characters would and wouldn't survive the series. The 'frantic' efforts to get the sub going was pretty hilarious and had me yelling at the screen "Stop wasting time!" a sure sign that I was wasting mine.

Surprisingly it was the unknowns (pretty much unknown to me) in the group that kept me interested in this, I found myself fast forwarding through the Minnie, Goran, Orla and James moments to get to the people that interested me.

Finally the ending was predictable and had me relieved that the series wouldn't ever continue, I am incredibly surprised that the BBC churned out this rubbish but then again they are responsible for the recent travesty known as 'Alice and her six dads' a reality show that was really just a showcase for a self obsessed bride.

Mediocre - average: lacking exceptional quality.

The once great BBC has fallen foul yet again to that great modern British attribute; mediocrity. While usually I would applaud the BBC for it's policy on social cohesion the actors inclusion is just well......formulaic. The way in which the BBC put together this drama is almost as though it was drama-by-numbers.

All the building blocks are there:

Ethnic minorities represented (including the new kid on the British block the eastern European) check.

Evil state puppet to attract liberals: check

SF concept to attract males under 45: check

Unnecessary romance to draw in female viewers: check.

Complicated yet vague plot: check.

Sum of all it's parts....FAIL.

The dialogue was ABYSS-mal, the characters seemed to ALIENate the audience rather than draw them and I do understand why viewers might seem DEEPly LOSTed when watching it.

I liked the premise, unknown danger, underwater thus claustrophobic thus small cast (including Minnie Driver who I've always liked). I still think the idea could have worked. However what we got was an absolute disaster. It failed on every level I can think of. There were so many holes in the plot you would be hard pressed to find enough large underwater vessels to drive through them all. The personal relationships between the characters was shallow and unbelievable, and their responses to events totally absurd. It may have been slightly helped by reducing the run time from 5 hours to 90 minutes.

Where are the new BBC programmes to rival Doomwatch and Out of the Unknown, or the fantastic Edge of Darkness. Maybe I'm just getting rather old.

How many BBC executives are going to get a bonus for this one I wonder?

And as for one reviewer using this production to compare the BBC with HBO I just despair.