So how do you go from a marriage breaking up after 2 hours 50 minutes of viewing with Freya kicking Aiden out of the house after discovering the dirty tricks he's been up to, to the two of them entering 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister and Deputy? Simple. Three little words. With the cop-out and ridiculous bit of writing of "six months later". Literally. Fade to black after Freya kicks him out, put up the three simple words "six months later", then fade in to show the two of them, side by side, in front of #10, with the announcer explaining that the Golden Couple are about to enter as Prime Minister and Deputy/Foreign Secretary. Seriously? That's the way you want to end this?
Not good enough. Nowhere near good enough.
What a massive disappointment this turned out to be. Was that really all Paula Milne could come up with in the way of ending this off?
Frankly, it felt like a fourth episode had been written to show how they could have pulled this reversal off, the powers-that-be decided either that they didn't have the money to pay for the production and told Paula to cut it short OR they decided the whole scenario was so absurd that they told her to wrap it up with this silly ending instead. Not sure what other justification there could have been for the way this was finished in such an unsatisfactory manner.
But I'd long given up on this before we reached the last few minutes.
So Aiden earlier offers a hand of friendship to Babbish in a sort of Kiss-and-Make-up scene. To show he is genuine in the offer, he offers Babbish a detailed proposal for an economic plan that he'd been working on before he resigned as Minister. Babbish, understandably, is initially suspicious. Why would Aiden do this, we can see him thinking? Why does he now want to be friends? He's my arch-enemy after all. "For Freya's sake", Aiden responds. And thus Babbish falls into the trap and accepts the tainted document.
So does Babbish then following President Reagan's advice of "Trust but Verify". He does not. He opts for the "trust" bit, but "verify" is right out the window. He contacts the contractors Aiden had been working with and recommended ... or so Aiden says! When the contractors show up and offer Babbish a bribe, does Babbish realize his suspicions were right after all, that it was all a set-up on Aiden's part, show the contractors the door, and report the bribe to the Prime Minister? He does not of course. Oblivious to the hidden camera that is running, he takes the bribe with a handshake and thus starts his downfall. Film to follow at 11:00!
Is this gullibility the least bit credible in an obviously clever Cabinet Minister? Hardly.
And what about the undercover reporters? They were obviously part of the plan all along to bring Babbish down on Aiden's behalf. How else could they have found themselves in Babbish's office? How else could they have been there without Aiden putting them in the picture and arranging the whole thing? Would they then have been content with that? Or being the good British tabloid journalists that they obviously were, would they not then have sought out the bigger story of one former Cabinet Minister asking them to set up a current Cabinet Minister? I would think so, as that would have been the far larger story in their minds and probably would have resulted bringing down the Government, not just Babbish. Of course they would have exposed Aiden for what he had done.
The whole episode was absurd. That it has a score of 7.5 on IMDb as I write this is beyond my comprehension. Sure, the acting was wonderful and the actors deserve praise for what they did with this script. I'll give them credit for that but acting alone is not enough..
Yes, there is a twist at the end when we discover in the last 30 seconds that it is Freya who is Prime Minister and that it is Aiden who is the deputy, but that trick is nowhere near enough to justify sitting through 3 hours of this series.
Sorry, but a 1 is all this effort deserves in the way of a score from me.
Not good enough. Nowhere near good enough.
What a massive disappointment this turned out to be. Was that really all Paula Milne could come up with in the way of ending this off?
Frankly, it felt like a fourth episode had been written to show how they could have pulled this reversal off, the powers-that-be decided either that they didn't have the money to pay for the production and told Paula to cut it short OR they decided the whole scenario was so absurd that they told her to wrap it up with this silly ending instead. Not sure what other justification there could have been for the way this was finished in such an unsatisfactory manner.
But I'd long given up on this before we reached the last few minutes.
So Aiden earlier offers a hand of friendship to Babbish in a sort of Kiss-and-Make-up scene. To show he is genuine in the offer, he offers Babbish a detailed proposal for an economic plan that he'd been working on before he resigned as Minister. Babbish, understandably, is initially suspicious. Why would Aiden do this, we can see him thinking? Why does he now want to be friends? He's my arch-enemy after all. "For Freya's sake", Aiden responds. And thus Babbish falls into the trap and accepts the tainted document.
So does Babbish then following President Reagan's advice of "Trust but Verify". He does not. He opts for the "trust" bit, but "verify" is right out the window. He contacts the contractors Aiden had been working with and recommended ... or so Aiden says! When the contractors show up and offer Babbish a bribe, does Babbish realize his suspicions were right after all, that it was all a set-up on Aiden's part, show the contractors the door, and report the bribe to the Prime Minister? He does not of course. Oblivious to the hidden camera that is running, he takes the bribe with a handshake and thus starts his downfall. Film to follow at 11:00!
Is this gullibility the least bit credible in an obviously clever Cabinet Minister? Hardly.
And what about the undercover reporters? They were obviously part of the plan all along to bring Babbish down on Aiden's behalf. How else could they have found themselves in Babbish's office? How else could they have been there without Aiden putting them in the picture and arranging the whole thing? Would they then have been content with that? Or being the good British tabloid journalists that they obviously were, would they not then have sought out the bigger story of one former Cabinet Minister asking them to set up a current Cabinet Minister? I would think so, as that would have been the far larger story in their minds and probably would have resulted bringing down the Government, not just Babbish. Of course they would have exposed Aiden for what he had done.
The whole episode was absurd. That it has a score of 7.5 on IMDb as I write this is beyond my comprehension. Sure, the acting was wonderful and the actors deserve praise for what they did with this script. I'll give them credit for that but acting alone is not enough..
Yes, there is a twist at the end when we discover in the last 30 seconds that it is Freya who is Prime Minister and that it is Aiden who is the deputy, but that trick is nowhere near enough to justify sitting through 3 hours of this series.
Sorry, but a 1 is all this effort deserves in the way of a score from me.
