The Investigator: A British Crime Story

The show goes under the guise of a re-investigation but every new suspect and discovery is followed an interview with police detectives who made the very discovery or named the particular suspect decades ago.

The sad story of the disappearance of Carole Packham - and who could blame her if she did disappear - is told in a four-hour series, "The Investigator: A British Crime Story" from 2016.

I agree with other reviewers, there just wasn't enough there to justify four episodes - 90 minutes would have sufficed.

The other problem is that the investigator did not solve the case or find out where Carole's body is, if she is indeed dead and buried.

The story is bizarre - Carole's husband moved his mistress into the house to live with him, the wife, and the daughter. Gee for some reason it caused a strain in the marriage. One day Carole was gone, leaving only a note and her wedding ring on top of it.

The prevailing theory is that Russell Packham, in prison for her murder, killed her, though he says he didn't. His girlfriend took Carole's identity in order to get a job in Canada using her visa. She also impersonated Carole to sign over the rights to the house so it could be sold. But no, gee, she didn't know Carole was dead.

I wish Carole could have escaped but no doubt Russell did her in. He likes that feeling of control he gets from not telling anyone where her body is. One thing we know, wherever Carole is, she's at peace now.

Well 3 hours of my life I can't get back. If the main character of this show is actually an accomplished police detective as claimed, then I am setting up a criminal enterprise in England. Normally I am all over British crime shows as they tend to be top notch. This,however, is a load of repetitive drivel that meanders aimlessly between the odd revelation but never reaches any satisfactory conclusion. Other reviewers suggest it would make an interesting 1 hour documentary, I wouldn't even give it that much. Its just some self aggrandized near do well who rides around in his Jag pretending to play copper while getting the hopes up of terribly distraught people.

This is a truly awful series ... don't waste your time. As others have noted, it would have been just as interesting as a one-episode, 20-minute, mini-series. The main presenter, an ex-detective, has as much charisma as an ash-tray. How any producer fell for this series is beyond belief. The female journalist, Branagh Munro, who does something similar for the BBC is light-years more authoritative and thorough. Curious how the only 8-star review appeared here just a week before the screening of Series 2 ... don't fall for it, watch paint dry instead.

From the weird, over dramatized "detective lab" or wherever the investigator's "team" works out of to the constant repetition of information and the majority of leads being already proven and publicly known, this is a very boring and completely stretched out version of a crime documentary.

I have never been so irritated with a TV show that I felt the need to write a review but I am so disturbed that Simon Cowell needed to get involved with dead and missing persons cases and cause added distress to the victim's families for nothing. I believe 100% that this series did not gain them any more closure whatsoever as the investigator's "detective work" was completely laughable.

Everything in the series is presented as if it is a revolutionary discovery, when in fact basically the whole series is this investigator interviewing officials and reiterating what they had already previously discovered and known. It feels like a desperate attempt to cash in on the current trend of "dark documentaries" and it really shows.

That and the irritating way the information is displayed, if you are going to watch the show, get ready for at least a collective ten minutes throughout the episode just to be pure recapping.

I can not overstate what an absolute waste of time this was, I am furious for the families involved, the second supposed subject of season 2 was basically dropped in the first episode. It is lazy and rather disgusting, knowing the money-grabbing nature of Simon Cowell.