Love Rat

I taped this as it was shown whilst I was away on holiday so binge watched it on my return. In truth, I needn't have bothered - this really was the worst piece of drama I've seen on TV for many a year. The production and direction were tolerable for the most part but the acting was dire. Not entirely the fault of the cast ... they were let down by a poor script. It was wooden, cliche-ridden and lacked any credibility in terms of characterisation. Such a shame. The scenario had huge potential and I was drawn into it by the title alone. Alas it failed to deliver. Sorry to be so negative but there it is.

Totally unconvincing acting and storyline despite having some good actors in it. That is about all that needs to be said. Each episode seemed to become worse than the previous one There are no redeeming features about this series except that we only have to endure three episodes. The lead character, Sally Lindsay, lurches from one disaster to another. The crooks in Cyprus are weakly and poorly acted. The ex husband is a total loser and a waste of space, he is pathetic. The only one with any redeeming features is the police woman. I would not recommend this to anyone and I wish I had not wasted my time watching it. There is no real suspense.

Channel 5 are throwing money at original drama productions and I suppose that's to be encouraged but once you've watched this you might reconsider.

Despite the premise of Love Rat being 'Men bad women daft' we gave it a go on my5 (ten years licence free this year thank you) with the intention of binge watching the series. It became clear early on that we wouldn't be doing that. The pacing was unrealistically fast C5 got four episodes out of this (more than enough) but Netflix would have got ten. The dialogue was awful and so unnatural its only purpose was to justify the next bit. None of the cast were good enough to save this. Amateur is the best way to describe it.

Love Rate quickly became a comedy for us and that continued part way into the second episode. We'd worked out the ending before Emma left for Cyprus while unpacking her kitchen boxes in the dark. The ridiculousness beat the humour and we decided to end it so we missed out on e3 and went for e4, the big finale. The suspense. We were right not to expect much. It was a chore to watch and every time we thought it couldn't get any worse, it did.

Despite its unintentional qualities Love Rat was about the worst show I remember watching. Channel 5 is rightly at the bottom of the pile in terms of quality TV but the overall quality of UK TV is on the slide and we find ourselves watching foreign language shows on Walter Presents on catch up on 4. The French, Germans and Italians are all producing TV that is far better.

We started watching this because at first it looked interesting.

Steadily it descends to the level of 'El Dorado' (if you remember that) mixed with a particularly bad 'mills and boon' novel.

The acting is largely appalling and the characters wooden cardboard caricatures.

The plot holes are so many and varied you could drive a car through them.

The series generally has all the authenticity of a painted on sun tan.

But, it's saving grace, is it is so bad, it becomes comical. We ended up having to watch it to the end just to see the terrible acting and absurd script to the bitter laughable end.

Like others I have questioned - how did this get made ? It beggars belief

2/10 and that 2 is for comedy.

The 'infinite monkey theorem' suggests that a monkey hitting typewriter keys at random for an infinite amount of time would almost surely write any given text at some point, including the complete works of Shakespeare.

What people *don't* know about this theorem is that it also suggests that it would take that same monkey around only 3½ hours (including a 15-minute lunch break for a banana and a Kit Kat) to write the average 4-part drama for Channel 5.

And in the case of Love Rat, average is being kind.

It's abysmal. Whoever told Neil Morrissey he could act was a bare faced liar, as even up against the rest of this wooden cast he was particularly dreadful.

The daughter has to be one of the most unlikeable characters ever written (better luck next time, monkey) but thankfully she's not in it much. Less thankfully that means more time for the mother to waddle around Cyprus bouncing from gullible to stupid along the way.

I saw the ending coming from a mile away despite it being utterly ridiculous, and as for the final scenes - well, perhaps the monkey had had a lobotomy.

3/10

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