No Return

You don't see Sheridan Smith on TV for ages then she's... yes back again (and on top form), starring in a new 4-parter about a family on holiday in Turkey dealing with the arrest of their 16 year old son for a serious crime.

Written by Danny Brocklehurst who penned the excellent Brassic the opening episode was a confident piece of drama. Production values were good all round, it was well cast the actors were on form and it had a clever score. Great cameo by the Turkish lawyer acting for the family.

It's not going to win awards but overall I really enjoyed the story, it tackles strong and important issues like consent, moral dilemmas and sexual identity, but at the same time it was a thoroughly entertaining drama.

Very unlikeable characters, impossible to have sympathy for any of them. Unoriginal, drunken Brits on holiday story. Predictable, just dull. By the end you just don't care what happens.

A family populated with unlikeable characters go on holiday, there's a incident...

Trouble for me was, by the time the alleged incident occurs, which is only minutes into the first episode, I no longer cared what happened.

I persevered, purely because Sheridan Smith always gives good value, however her character, along with pretty much every other, was so deeply unlikeable as to be impossible to empathise with.

The side drama involving Smith's character's sister was utterly pointless and appeared to be there solely to pad the story out to fill four hours.

A shame really, the potential was there for a gripping drama, instead what we ended up with was something that would have been more suited to a four episode Eastenders/Coronation Street storyline.

This is a complete mishmash of a plot. Certain things don't add up. There are too many loopholes in the plot, reacting is cheesy in particular the lawyer. It will leave you empty and wondering why you watched it, which I did. If you have ever seen the comedy programme Benidorm in which Sheridan Smith Acted this pretty much seems similar but it's not supposed to. Oh dear oh dear.

Poorly scripted plot with even dumber subplots and an ending that beggars belief. We watched it because it was shot in Spain but all we learned was that crappy shows can be made in Spain just as easily as anywhere else in the world.