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Safe House (2015)
Poor fare
Two stories, two different safe houses, two entirely different casts. It's actually a stretch to describe this as a single series.
Moreover both stories ending with unresolved plot lines that really scream "give us a sequel" is absurd when no true sequel is forthcoming. In the case of season two one can only suppose that those holding the purse strings were not taken in by the ploy and resolutely refused to commission any more. Correctly perhaps, as leaving the viewer dissatisfied is not good commercial sense for television.
It is a curio of modern TV - and also to an extent film - that even the mediocre today enjoys exceedingly high production values. It is rare that a contemporary work can justifiably be criticised for the basics and here it is just as true, the technical aspects of the production are top notch. The acting is fair: better and with better developed characters in the first season than the second perhaps. Still none of that is real compensation for sadly predictable plots rife with cliché.
Could do better.
Blue Murder (2003)
A series that doesn't know what it is
This is a series that should have all the advantages with excellent casting and good production values yet it start out not knowing what it is supposed to be or where it is going. The writers and/or the producers seem to think that if it cannot be outright comedic it must at least have moments of light relief. The beginning feels as if it is transparently a vehicle for Caroline Quentin, based perhaps on her long running appearance in Jonathan Creek but that itself is disrespectful of her undoubted skill as an actor.
Only by season 4 does it finally settle down to be serious drama without the interpolated moments of jollity to tell excellent stories told with very fine performances across the cast.
Having achieved that it throws much of it away in the last season by paring the story-lines and episode length down to a mean 45 minutes (not counting advertising). Even the last story presented over the last two episodes fails to recapture the depths of the previous season and a side plot concerning DCI Janine Lewis's family that is obviously designed to elicit sympathy for her fails to do so by dragging up all the single mum woman police officer tropes on offer.
So close to being good it sabotages itself.
Above Suspicion (2009)
Either brilliant or a travesty, depending on how you look at it
Four seasons, four extended stories in eleven episodes.
If throughout you felt that there was something off, something not quite right about Kelly Reilly's character Detective Constable, later Detective Inspector, Anna Travis then you'd be right to and you'd find yourself justified in the last 30 seconds of the the very last scene of the the last episode.
In one respect this is undoubtedly a tour de force of sustained character exposition, both in the writing and in the portrayal.
But looked at a different way it requires that the integrity of the entire series be undermined, demanding that the viewer stick with a protagonist that feels uncomfortable, perhaps even dishonest.
I suspect that reviews citing "bad acting" by Reilly may actually be picking up on the really good acting of a bad character and perhaps the reviewer didn't stick it out to the denouement. Which of course is the problem with playing this sort of game with the audience.
So too the optimistic "trivia" item suggesting that La Plante had four more episodes to go is really makes you wonder what could be done with a central character revealed to be so despicable. In canning the show ITV made the only reasonable call: there was nowhere left to go.
Bancroft (2017)
Difficult to watch, for the wrong reasons
Drama in which the principal protagonists is a wrong-un can be compelling. Being shown something of the the mind of evil is fascinating even when at its most dark.
For the first season we are slowly but relentlessly drawn into the complex backstory of Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Bancroft and the even more Byzantine machinations by which she hopes to avert any consequences.
In Detective Sargent Katherine Stevens we are offered another focus character to draw our empathy and in whom we can invest our hope that justice may be done. But we are disappointed and instead left to deal with the apparent triumph of evil.
The three episodes of the second series present and even more difficult watch, and for the production team perhaps what might seem to be an even braver approach to drama. However without a single sympathetic main character at the centre of the story with who to identify the result is dark deeds provoked by darker motives portrayed in a sterile manner. We should be horrified and would be if there were any reason to care.
As a consequence this would have been a difficult piece to play and it should be acknowledged that some extremely fine acting is on screen. But somewhere in the writing or the directing or both the production fails to engage so that in the end what should have been a dramatic and cathartic denouement for the viewer instead has astonishingly little impact.
5 out of 10 because much of this production is excellent but all is fatally compromised by this central flaw.
Beecham House (2019)
Visually wonderful, but...
This is visually every bit as gloriously sumptuous as you would expect Mughal India to be. Location and set, costume and design, all done justice by the cinematography. The actors too do a fine and creditable job with what they are given.
So it is a tragedy that the script plods from cliché to cliché dragging the plots through scenes of such trite and utter predictability that you watch with every confidence of knowing exactly what come next and what words are about to be spoken.
It leaves me really very sad that it could so easily have been so much better.
The Luminaries (2020)
Just a whisker off succeeding
The over-riding fault of the novel is that its contrived structure constrains the narrative too much so that it doesn't flow naturally. The set-up is long, the denouement dramatic but brief.
As a result the oft-heard complaint that a film or miniseries doesn't follow a book is here turned on its head. By following too closely we are given four episodes of longeur one of moderately rising tension and a dramatic finale that is far better than - and ill served by - what has gone before.
The production is superb, the cinematography admirable, the acting first class and, despite the foregoing criticism, the script quite fine. Yet for all that it is questionable whether the eventual pay-off is adequate compensation for wading through the early parts.
Excising an hour from the early parts would have probably made this a 9/10, instead as it stands 7/10 and only a qualified success.
The Name of the Rose (2019)
It should be magnificent...
Production design was beautiful, even when historically dubious. The lighting was wonderful, in places exquisite. The cinematography, with a few jarring exceptions, magnificent. Superb acting from an admirable cast.
All in all... it was awful.
The descent in a few strides from deep Alpine Winter to bucolic Springtime was doubtless highly symbolic but also marvellously risible, destroying my suspension of disbelief. Which only increased my ire at Adso's repeated romantic interludes which were not just an unnecessary interpolation but served to dispel the intensely claustrophobic atmosphere that should have dominated the whole story. The incessant cuts to explicative back-story and the introduction of extraneous characters to fill it out did nothing but contribute to opening broad vistas into what should have been narrowly confined. Oh, but because it's RAI Fiction there has to be extra titillation.
A paper mill? One of the strangenesses is that linen paper is an unrecognised material. When this is actually mentioned it is not a deepening of the mysteries but a laugh out loud idiocy. How could paper be unrecognised in a monastery that owns and operates its own paper mill?
So too the library itself. At least there is no attempt to elucidate the symbolism of the building as intended by Eco because the handsome building presented had too many floors, too many towers, too many doors and too many windows to be reasonably illustrative. (And probably not enough stairs.)
Five monks died in what should have been remarkable circumstances but you'd be forgiven for not noticing as relatively little was made of this.
Why they died. What secret Jorge though so important, hardly seems to matter because it is barely referred to tangentially and never brought out into the light. Someone who had not read Eco's book, or perhaps seen and well remembered the 1986 film, will come away without the least idea what all the fuss was about.
Granting that Adso's rather tedious philosophising of the novel was never going to make it onto prime time television, what remained as story and drama should be a mystery and to a degree a horror story. But drama and mystery and horror are dissipated by being utterly soulless.