User reviews

I think this series is going to get better, this first episode was pretty good. It's definitely no Line of Duty, but the potential is here.

I thought the acting was a little bit mixed, Nesbitt as always does a very good job, some others are perhaps a little wooden.

The only thing I wasn't crazy about, was the camera work, it was a bit shaky, and at times I found it distracting.

A decent start, but I think this series is going to be good. 6/10.

Less of the blarney and more of the Irish noir in the first episode of Bloodlands.

Hard bitten cop DCI Tom Brannick (James Nesbitt) is on the lookout for former IRA operative Pat Keenan who is believed to have been kidnapped.

Brannick thinks this might be the work of a notorious serial killer Goliath suspected in the deaths of four people going back to the 1990s. He was never found and the investigation might have ceased due to the Good Friday Agreement.

Goliath is personal for Brannick. One of the victim's might be his wife. She worked for the intelligence services and has been missing for over 20 years.

His boss DCS Jackie Twomey (Lorcan Cranitch) is not keen on reopening old wounds and tearing a hole in the fragile peace in Northern Ireland.

Although the publicity mentions that this is produced by Line of Duty's Jed Mercurio. It was an uninspired opening episode. It had too many police drama cliches. A shouty boss with something to hide. Brannick's partner DS Niamh McGovern seems to be too inexperienced as a cop.

Still it warmed up at the end with some much needed tension. It might be interesting to look at how the past and present collide in this thriller.

The plot is intriguing and the cast is convinig. The video editing is rather substandard with frequent jerks. Totally avoidable. However the storyline and background music makes it decent. I liked the locations and characters which are not too cluttered.

This makes it worth watching subsequent episodes to see how the characters unfold . I do however hope that video editing is not to jerky as that can put you off. The storyline is set with violent and turbulent period in Northern Ireland. This allows exploring the painful conflicts of history. Most of us have forgotten the ugliness of it. Perhaps a brief recap if this may have made it more rivetting. Then again it is hoped that would unfold in the future episodes.

Videographer seems to have an obsession with shaky cam, I've only watched the first 36mins and had to stop, it was genuinely making me feel motion sickness. Shakycam constantly throughout, even when people are standing still! Not sure I will manage to watch the rest. There is really no point making a well-acted/written series if the camera work is so shaky that it makes it unwatchable. Four stars for the acting/story/production of what I managed to get through - would have good potential except for the terrible camerawork. Hard to believe, but apparently there are still camera people who don't realise that shaky cam is really only suited to faux documentaries/battle scenes, i.e. Such that it induces actual realism. Nothing realistic about people standing still, talking to each other, where a documentary crew would obviously never be allowed and no real physical action is occurring, and yet camera still shaking every which way. I might skip to the 2nd episode to see how it is, maybe it was a one-off - once my head stops spinning and the nausea goes away...