Playing Nice

High hopes for this mini-series, but these were quickly dashed within 10 minutes of the first episode.

Formulaic, predictable and entirely unbelievable. A waste of a promising premise and quality cast.

By the time you get to the end of the final episode, you know what is going to be the outcome, but will struggle to care either way. Pantomime villains and seems to borrow a lot of the main protagonist's characteristics from Sleeping with the Enemy, only not as well or as menacingly.

There are so many flaws in the plot you lose the ability to empathise with the characters despite the awful situation.

It could and should have been so much better!

My Review- Playing Nice Streaming on SBS on Demand My Rating - 7.5/10 This interesting and emotionally charged four part one off mini series poses a question no parent would ever hopefully be faced with .

How would you react if you were called to a meeting by the Chief of a Hospital to tell you how sorry they were that the young child you had nurtured from birth was not actually yours ?

Due to a mix up of name tags accidental or otherwise each baby had in fact been handed over to the wrong parents which later was confirmed by DNA testing.

Now two couples face the horrifying dilemma of either keeping the sons they have raised and loved from birth or reclaiming their biological child.

James Norton and Niamh Algar star as a couple Pete Riley and Maddie Wilson the parents of Theo their young son.

The other couple Miles and Lucy Lambert are played by James McCardle and Jessica Brown Findlay are parents to David who has health some issues .

Miles when told that Theo the more active outgoing child is actually his son sets in place a devious set of legal challenges and investigations that threaten Pete and Maddies custody of their son .

Playing Nice is an excellent title for this series because The Lambert's appear to be playing nice in the beginning however as the excellent screenplay by Grace Ofori-Attah based on a global best seller by J. P. Delaney progresses the true colours of Miles Lambert are revealed.

I found this series very well produced , directed and I enjoyed the performances from all the cast ,especially James Norton.

The subject matter starts off well. What would any of us do if we discovered that our child wasn't our child.

The frustration and confusion at the start makes sense and you do get a fairly accurate take on what 4 regular people would do in this scenario.

Then however, they made Pete become a complete man child without zero intellectual though, making basic mistake after basic mistake and being far too trusting for any normal human being. Then of course he forgets that he was a journalist and shows next to zero of these skills, showing zero attempt to do any basic research. With 99% of his mistakes just not being something any normal human being would make.

Peter aside, Miles was far too two dimensional a villain, being laughable at times, with Pete and Maddie not reacting like any normal person would. No police down South?

Overally the show starts with promise but soon turns into a badly written villain series, with Pete repeatedly making mistakes that makes no logical sense, and the finale was well, lackluster to say the least.

Doubt anyone will be watching this in a month's time.

Four episodes of superb acting, plot, backdrop, everything! Horrific idea underpinning the whole thing but its all entirely plausible, really real characters, the story build and builds. And the way the "system" gets involved in these things is well portrayed. It'd be easy to binge watch the whole thing, was so good I saved the final episode to look forward to another day. Not a single weak episode in the whole thing - am really not sure what the couple of poor reviews were watching. It wasn't this! This is one of the best TV dramas I've seen for ages, will almost certainly watch it again. Highly recommend!

Pete and Maddie receive a shock from the hospital, who explain that there was a mix up with their child, that baby Theo was the child of another couple, and their son David, was given to Miles and Lucy, the couples try to work to a solution.

I thoroughly enjoyed this four part series, and despite some of the less than favourable commentary in the press, I think this was an excellent series.

Ignore the negative reviews, I'm not sure some watched this the whole way through.

It's very well paced, emotionally charged and full of tension. It will make you feel angry and stressed, good drama is supposed to make to make you feel, this certainly does that.

Put yourself in the shoes of Pete and Maddie, can you imagine being in their situation, it's a parent's worst nightmare.

I'm not sure why, but this put me in mind of their slick 2 part ITV dramas from the early 2000's, it has that kind of vibe, a time where itv made some really great drama.

Great performances, and arguably it's James Norton who headlines it, but James McArdle perhaps steals it, I haven't disliked a character for such a long time, Miles is a monster. Credit to the two kids also, they do such a good job.

Quality viewing.

8/10.