Cannes Confidential

I wanted to like this so badly. Love Jamie Bamber, beautiful scenery on the French Riviera, heists, capers... what could go wrong? Well..... apparently a lot. Start with a lead actress with zero charisma and acting ability, then take yourself too seriously and remove all of the fun and romance and intrigue and make it weird and dark with everyone pissed off all the time. Whoever was in charge here missed the boat completely and should really have taken a cue from shows like The Mallorca Files or Candace Renoir. It's a shame really to waste so much potential. Get a different lead actress and revamp.

We wanted to like it. But a little too woke with actresses that can't act, who lack any femininity, and spend all the time fist fighting and kick boxing the men (the bad guys). Beautiful scenery on the French Riviera. That's it. The lead actress has zero charisma. The other actress hates everyone and takes the fun out of everything. There's no pleasantness in this shows. No sexy undercurrents. They tried to make a Mallorca Files but missed in every aspect. The Mallorca Files is the way it should have been done. Recast the whole thing with characters that have effervescence and panache. And don't have every episode end with ladies duking it out, and badly I might say.

First off, if this was supposed to be a spoof and the female lead was intentionally acting horribly, I apologize and the rest of the public should have a peak. However, if this was in any way suppose to be serious TV, someone should be fired immediately. Perhaps if they are French speakers, they should've spoke French and put in some sub titles. No value was added with their speaking English, which they certainly spoke well but that was what they clearly were focused on, speaking that is, and not acting. What an absolute abomination and worse, waste of a beautiful back drop. For a travel brochure, its great, for entertainment; well we made through 11 minutes before we gave up. Even Jamie Bamber, a fine English actor, could not save it.

I watched 4 episodes, so I gave this a real shot.

Let's start with the good. The show itself is a regular crime per episode with an underlying back story tying the main character into some larger mystery. The setting is beautiful, the people are beautiful.

Unfortunately, that's where the good ends. A sulky, work obsessed female lead broken down by a charming male counterpart is becoming a little overdone (and was.definitely done better in Mallorca Files), and this barely plays with the formula enough to set itself apart. The back-story itself is just too slow burning and the individual crimes of each episode just don't feel very well built.

I feel awful typing this, but I do feel that if the French actors were able to speak in their native tongue, their acting would feel far more convincing and their personalities would shine a little more. As it stands it feels forced in a lot of ways, and it's made worse with the contrast to Jamie Bamber's "upper-class" English accent. The chief of police I'm still not sure isn't dubbed even after watching so much.

Enough of that though. All around, I think it's watchable so I'm not going super low on the rating, but there are far better examples of the genre to go to before you get to this.

The good: Scenery is beautiful & I like the Harry King actor. At least he can act. The potential for good story lines is there but it keeps missing the mark.

The bad: Pretty much everything else...the dialogue, writing, editing, acting (especially the female leads), the same backstory has been way overdone & the filming & lighting were dark. Colours seem really off to me in some indoor scenes. Not in an artistic way. Makes me wonder if it was filmed on a phone. The very worst is the sound track that sounds like it's from the '80's and completely drowns out the dialogue, which is hard to make out anyway with the French accents but impossible with the music. We had to watch with subtitles. The worst episode is the 1st one.