Coma

After last weeks excruciately awful Love Rat I was hopeful that with jason watkins heading the cast ,that Coma would break the cycle of successive rubbish being served up by budget broadcasters Channel 5. Lack of finance has never stopped Ken Loach producing brilliant and relevant drama. However Coma could have been so much better in dealing with the problem of low life adolescent criminality. Unfortunately the makers of Coma chose to take the path of allowing actors such as jonas armstrong overact his part as local psycho gangster. Are we really living in the dystopian world portrayed in Coma. I don't believe so. Just remember mr Watkins to strike this one off your cv.

I was looking forwards to viewing this as I liked the three main leads.

However a poor script ;often too repetitive gave the series a lack of drive.

The police were once again portrayed as inadequate buffoons.

The young actor who played the lout showed only a characture of what was a pivotal role ,though again this was the script rather than the actor.

The story could have been told in one episode My version was that Simon should have told Paul that it was his(Simon's) boss who hit the boy.

Then when Paul had dealt with this person,Simon could have anonymously phoned the police with details of the offence. Paul would be arrested and locked up and Simon was off the hook having only to deal with junior psycho.

Firstly I read some other reviews just now before posting this. Some are very harsh and I think many people just expect too much. This obviously isn't going to be a big budget BBC or ITV drama, it's channel 5. Not saying it should get a free pass but the cast and crew are working on a different scale so it should be kept in mind when reviewing.

Like others I'm a big fan of Jason Watkins and he can't turn in a bad performance in my view. This show has an intriguing premise and as time goes on it does get a big bogged down in stereotypical gangster stuff but it has some decent twists and turns. A solid seven from me.

A really interesting story with good acting throughout. It really does make you think how you'd react in a situation like the one shown in this series.

I won't do any plot spoilers but there are a lot of twists and turns through the entirety of the series and the biggest one of all happens right at the end of the final episode. I really liked the main character played by Jason Watkins. Paul played by Jonas Armstrong also did a stellar job as the distraught dad.

Episodes 3 and 4 were the best out of the 4 and I recommend this to anyone who likes a good drama. Going into the series I wasn't expecting much but I left glad that I watched it!

Coma is a brilliantly tense thriller, over four hours of increasing intensity, there are no loops here just escalations.

It centres around a mild mannered Jason Watkins and a single moment, tormented by just about everything and anyone he snaps and his world unravels. Pretty soon he's sitting uncomfortably in wine bars with petty gangsters and lying to the police.

It is also awful, a great set of core names wondering what they are doing here. It is filmed in Eastern Europe and that doesn't get lost - it simply looks nothing like anywhere in the UK.

Somehow this manages to be enthralling, tense and awful at the same time.

It's 4 hours - it's channel 5 - there are worse things on TV to watch!