To be fair, I don't know if Trevor Eve is a good actor or not. I've never seen him in anything else, and after enduring this for far too long, I never want to see his face again. The character he plays (overplays, usually) is the most patronizing, misogynistic, narcissistic toddler ever to "lead" a show. He's an incompetent cop, a worse team leader, and an insufferable boor. We stuck with the show through four seasons for several reasons: (1) with some notable exceptions (this being one), British shows about cops, forensics, and mysteries are 10 times better than American shows; (2) we are running out of good shows (Vera, No Offence, Happy Valley, Endeavour, Morse, Inspector Lewis, River, Shetland, etc.); (3) we liked Frankie (the overworked but extremely talented forensic scientist) and Grace (the knowledgeable psychologist-cum-profiler who ought to be able to see Boyd as the poser he is but for some reason doesn't); and (4) the stories were intriguing as long as you ignored the unexplained plot points, characters' ludicrously unbelievable actions, and the complete lack of continuity from one episode to the next. However, now we into Season 5: Frankie's gone (no explanation), Grace still cluelessly enables Boyd's appalling behavior, and Spence seems to have multiple personality disorder. The so-called team denigrates witnesses, suspects, and each other, always at top volume, to a soundtrack that seems like a '70s porn film run backward and at the wrong speed. We are no longer desperate enough to carry on abusing ourselves with this substandard drivel. The biggest crime involved in this show is that it kept getting renewed.
Review of Waking the Dead
