Payback

An apparently happily married-with-children male accountant is ruthlessly stabbed to death by a bunch of young thugs one Edinburgh morning while his wife looks on aghast nearby. Apparently he was the bookkeeper of a heavyweight gangster Peter Mullan who's managed to live very comfortably on his ill-gotten gains just outside the reach of the law.

However the gangster it seems was just about to break cover with the purchase of a small, populated island in the Outer Hebrides, only it seems that before he inconveniently got killed, the accountant scuppered the transaction with 28 million unaccounted for. Mullan still wants his island, for a very good reason which will become clear later, so he goes after the dead man's widow, Morven Christie, also an accountant and co-partner in the family firm, using every dirty trick in the book short of physical violence to coerce her into tracking down and retrieving his money.

He allocates his short-tempered young nephew to be her minder but even as she's reluctantly forced to turn forensic detective for this sinister criminal, she's also the focal point of two separate police investigations, the first rather improbably trying to fit her up for organising her husband's death and the other seeking to use her as a mole to bring down Mullan and his empire from the inside.

I did find it a bit difficult to follow the paper trail to the missing millions with its surreptitious accounting practices and obscure terminologies and of course the plot itself was far-fetched in the extreme with a number of contrived cliff-hanging situations and unlikely plot developments but somehow by the end the Gordian knot was duly untangled, just desserts duly administered and there was even a happy ending of sorts for Christie, her family and that Edinburgh essential, the foreign family nanny, that's if you consider going into the witness protection programme a good thing.

As a Scot, I enjoyed the familiar Edinburgh settings and the acting of the principals, Christie and Mullan plus it was nice to see Steven Mackintosh back on the small screen as Mullan's financial fixer although some of the support acting was rather mixed in quality.

Nevertheless, my wife and I enjoyed this roller-coaster six-part series and can think of worse ways to spend the cold dark winter nights than watching this.

Watched 3 of 6 episodes from streaming on ITVX. Stong performances from near all leading cast members.

Plenty of twists & turns. Characters have enough depth to enable the viewer to care about what happenss.

I like a decent Crime Drama but dislike those which are weak.. Only half way through my binge viewiing..... So far this has been compelling enough to keep me wanting more.

A few layers to this. Not high octane so far but has pace & the storyline has kept me engaged.

Fans of crime dramas can be quite demanding .....myself included.

I am mindful I have not given anything away (no spoilers). Better than many household name crime dramas I have seen.

Give it a go !

This show had me gripped from the first episode despite some really strange story constructions.

I'll get to those, but first I have to say the ending was incredibly unsatisfying. Almost all of the loose ends were left loose. As a whole, the series didn't make sense.

There was a police mole who really didn't have any influence on anything.

Why did Jarred do what he did?

How did the container fit in?

Perhaps the biggest question, which we knew was never going to be resolved, was why did Morris have to rely on a pretty ordinary suburban accountant to devise such brilliant schemes. He could have got anyone to do that. In fact, as it turned out, he almost didn't need her at all.

The DCI breaking all the rules and acting without any evidence of ethics gets away with it.

The financial forensic investigator seems to have a strong conscience but he has no impact on solving the crime.

Morven Christie was brilliant and her acting probably saved the show.

Overall, I'd say it was worth watching, but don't expect to understand the plot when you get to the end.

I made the mistake of reading some bad reviews and almost didn't watch this. It's way better than average and how anyone can give it only one star is beyond me. It was produced by Jed Mercurio the creator of Line of Duty so it was a cut above. The plot is unusual in that it involves finance and the hiding of illicit profits. It is well written, well acted, well directed and has great pace. What's not to like? Morven Christie, Peter Mullen and Derek Riddell are good as always and it's great to see Steven Mackintosh on our screens again. DC Kahn played by Prasanna Puwanarajah is an interesting conflicted character. Well worth a watch. My only quibble was Lexie being in tears the whole time.

I thought that the first episode was a bit slow and had too many plot holes although, as I am not going to write "spoilers", I won't list these. But they did reduce my final rating from 9 ot 8.

However, having now watched all the remaining 5 episodes, it does get better as it goes along - with fewer plot holes - and finishes with a good last episode, with no open ending laying the ground for another series.

I thought that all the actors playing the main characters did well, and there were few weaknesses. I also liked the writing and direction and, unlike so many crime series these days, didn't rely any chases between the "goodies and baddies" to bolster the plot.

This series is well worth four hours of your time.