davidsutherland-67824

It would have been one star but for Steve Coogan. But even there it felt a bit of "let's see how clever we can be". Poor jokes badly executed and the set, to put it politely, was a mess. The attempt to bring humour and relate it to the Trump era was totally misplaced in that the present reality is outgunning the fiction. So many of the jokes had been done so many times before that I was waiting for Strangelove to say "Don't mention the war". If I had left at the interval would I have regretted it - I don't think so. Not much more to say really. Moral of the story - don't mess with original genius.

For a programme sitting on the BBC Iplayer platform and easily accessible to young children the levels of "gritty" violence are totally unacceptable. And we wonder why we have issues with gangs and knife crime in our communities. This is not reflective of the situation but acts as normalising violence. Rebus as a character is a role seen by many - not a role model but when the BBC promotes violence as entertainment the plot has been lost. I have listened to Ian Rankin speak and am seriously disappointed he didnt feel it appropriate to intervene in the graphic nature of the violence as an executive producer.