Mayday

Something that could have been very good deteriorated into a farce.

It seems that the scriptwriters had no idea where to go and decided to throw in a, totally unnecessary, supernatural element. And, just to aggravate the viewer, even more, they left many, many questions unanswered. At the end, we sat there saying "what the hell just happened?".

Through the first four episodes of this five-parter, it seemed like any of several characters could have killed the May Queen. That the solution eventually comes through some mystical nonsense throws the previous four hours into the dustbin. What a disappointment.

On the day that she's meant to be crowned May Queen, Hattie Sutton vanishes without a trace, all manner of village secrets are forced out into the open.

It's a decent five part series, it jumped on The Broadchurch bandwagon, where that succeeds on every level, this one falters, for two reasons, pacing and characters.

It's very slow, it seems to take an age for anything to happen, and when it does, your concentration may have dipped somewhat. The characters are too overdone, everyone is suspicious, sinister, and seems to have a motive, none of them are plain old fashioned nice either, you wait five hours for one singular act of kindness.

It's a gorgeous looking series, very well presented, beautifully shot, they make full use of the idyllic location too.

I've read a few reviews, where people have commented that the ending spoils it, for me it's perhaps saved by the ending, the first three episodes are quite slow, the last two, ridiculously fat fetched, but at least there's some entertainment.

It's worth seeing, but it's not as good as I remembered it being. 6/10.

Fun mystery/whodunit with just a hint of druidic magic. Packed full of great actors all possibly guilty of something if not murder. If you like Brit murder mysteries, you'll love this.

I came here to see if IMDb could suggest something similar to this. It's been about a year since I watched it and I still remember how good it was. I see other ratings range from 1 to 10, so there's obviously quite a difference of opinion. I think it's unfair that some reviewers gave it a low rating because they expected a straight-forward police procedural and got something else. My only quibble was that the teenagers seemed a little older than the story said, and apart from that I thought it was fabulous and unpredictable, and I was satisfied with the ending. I strongly recommend it. Watch with an open mind, and pay attention.