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Bilkoboy
Reviews
The Greatest Love Story Never Told (2024)
Oh dear
Industrial grade self-indulgence. The sheer egotism required to make this clap-trap is off the scale. Why do people like J-Lo not have friends, associates or business partners who say to her, look mate, don't do this, it will wreck your brand/ make you look stupid/ make you look like a self-indulgent diva? There is really nothing here that is film worthy, only maybe to a tiny group of long term fans. Everyone else will watch this through their fingers and iluless the viewer has a strong stomach, are battlefield brave or are somewhat infirm, will simply not make it to the end.
I'd say this was one to avoid if I'm honest.
McDonald & Dodds (2020)
Laughably poor
Oh my god, where to start? The script is sooo bad. The characters are drawn with all the subtlety of an etch-a-sketch. Every action by every character is purely to ram home how good/bad/dopey/dishonest/lovely they are. Poor plot, just utter, utter rubbish. And Jason Watkins, what are you thinking? You're a good actor, why are you in this dreck?
Dublin Murders (2019)
Poor acting, crass script and generally unwatchable
Ten minutes into the first episode of this crime drama and I had to consult IMDB to find out who the painful poseur of a lead actor was. I noticed there were already about a dozen 10/10 scores registered for this production, so I suspect the production staff and friends of the cast were out in force.
Don't be fooled by the current IMDb 8.7 score, this production is awful. With the exception of Sara Greene (Cassie Maddox) who seemed quite natural and engaging, generally the acting was full of caricatures. Killian Scott (Rob Reilly) looks like he is permanently posing for the cover of GQ magazine, attempting to look brooding and dangerously alluring. Similarly the unit boss is a thinly drawn attempt to portray a 1970's style misogynist, but just looks ridiculous.
So far it's rubbish and I will not be watching the rest. If you persevere with it, I hope it improves because these are hours that you could use to watch something well written and better acted.
Sorry to say, but avoid.
The Casual Vacancy (2015)
A mess of a story
It's difficult to know where to start with this very disappointing drama. Set in a beautiful rural village where millionaire business people and professionals in their grade I listed manor houses live but a well struck 5 iron from a sink estate full of drug addled benefit scroungers and ne'er-do-wells, it seems to be attempting to highlight cultural and social divides, unfairness and inequity in our society. Fair enough, reasonable basic idea.
The problem was that the story was, quite frankly, rubbish. Initially it looked like a small guy vs. nasty rich property developer yarn, but this never really materialised in any meaningful or interesting way. When the impassioned champion of said small guy, and always excellent, Rory Kinnear dies at the end of a rather slow scene setting first episode, a from-the-grave on-line ghostly presence appeared to be setting up episodes 2 and 3 to develop into a ghost story (it didn't), or a taut psychological drama (didn't do this either). Instead it meandered between low level soap opera story threads (which mostly led nowhere interesting), made trite, obvious, uninteresting social commentary on far too many topics to be impactful, and ended up as a tragi-drama with a completely random drowning crow-barred into the story to provide some sort of "conclusion".
Low points - Gambon and McKenzie and Richard Glover were cartoonishly "bad", Emilia Fox's character was totally peripheral. The final scenes when the young boy wanders off and is then effectively abducted, not 20 yards from his mother by a well meaning doctor, who never thought to look for, or shout out to, any parents before carting him off home, was just ridiculous.
High points - Abigail Lawrie and Rory Kinnear were excellent, Keeley Hawes pretty good. Rural town setting was very nice indeed.
Tutti Frutti (1987)
Tutti Frutti and DVD release
A truly classic series. I looked for this on DVD and found the same as others on this board. I searched various sites, and it seems that the reason it's disappeared from site is that there are copyright issues on some of the songs used in the series, which have prevented repeating and releasing of the series. Damned shame. From memory, one of our very finest series and a terrific cast. I remember Katy Murphy was absolutely fantastic in this as Richard Wilson's assistant, and I simply don't understand how she has not been a more significant star since. I have seen her in a few minor parts since, but nothing significant.