Passenger

A compelling and pretty original show that's kind of a Happy Valley with a weirdness angle. The dialogue is great, the pacing moves things well, nothing is spoon fed to the audience and the performances are all first rate. Every episode is tantalizing and interesting. The ending leaves things rather open, with several unanswered questions hanging about, suggesting a possible follow up, though I think it works just fine as is. A very pleasant surprise. Having said that, some folks won't like it - people who need to have everything wrapped up and explained, or who use TV shows as second screen content while they browse on their phones. This requires attention and, not patience exactly, but a willingness to let go and let the story take you where it takes you.

If Sally Wainright (Happy Valley) and M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) got drunk while watching an episode of The League of Gentlemen they would end up writing something like this.

After watching the first episode I am confused and intrigued. People drive around in 25 year old cars but have smart phones. Someone plays a computer game from the 80s but they are an anti-fracking protester. Is this place even 'real'? I'm thinking 'Lost', 'Life on Mars' even 'The Truman Show'.

The first episode was quite disjointed and demanded patience from it's audience, that's a big ask these days. They did enough to get me watching episode 2 but only just.

I feel this show could have had potential but all just went very boringly downhill after episode one. The idea of the missing girl , the creature in the woods , the dead animals (which we still don't know why) could have made an interesting plot but it never ended up being about that. To be quite frank i don't even really know what the show was about or what the point of half the characters were. The lad watching the cameras at the end i cant even remember him in the other episodes. Was it drugs , was it not who knows. It ended feeling like there would still be another episode yet there wasnt. Dont know if anyone else agrees.

The village of Chadder Vale is beset by a series of bizarre tragedies, DI Riya Ajunwa is keen to investigate, but her boss wants a lid kept on things.

The amount of people I've spoken to that said they gave up after ten or twenty minutes, and I totally get why, this is the most frustrating series I've seen in a long while.

It's all over the place and very patchy, I'd argue half is just plain bad, and half is actually very good, the last two episodes were so much better, but getting to that point is hard work.

The story was very good, the acting on point, but the storytelling side of it was all over the place, at times it was virtually impossible to follow. When it finally falls into place, it's actually very satisfying, and it does come together well.

I've heard people rightly mention Twin Peaks and Fargo, personally I got more Fortitude vibes from it.

Very well acted, Wunmi Mosaku as always is great, at times she's better than the material allows.

6/10.

I can see what the writers where attempting to do but it fails to work because the UK is nothing like America, where a town can be isolated, hours away from a major town or city. The way they speak about Manchester as if it's a far off, all shapes and lights metropolis they can only dream of doesn't work because they could get a bus to Manchester in an hour from this fictional Lancs village (filmed in Todmorden so I'm estimating the distance from that).

Transplanting this Twin Peaks/Stranger Things atmosphere to Lancashire just doesn't work and it makes it silly. The 70s/80s aesthetic with the cars, decor and fashion combined with modern mobile phones is jarring, plus the scene of an old school point and click adventure played on a modern computer just feels like a jumbled mess.

The characters and community aren't believable, the plot moves at a snails pace without enough hook to keep the audience engaged and it feels as if the writers have never been North of the Watford Gap.

I watched it all purely to see what would become of it. I found nothing at the end and I can't see it being picked up for another series.