Underbelly: Vanishing Act

Really cringe. Interesting enough story but so badly executed it's entertaining. The acting is poor, the script is terrible and just comes off as a low budget NCIS type series. I wouldn't bother watching if you value your time and quality shows. I was just bored and it made me laugh because of how bad it is...

The same story could have been told in half the time with no loss of coherence and probably making a lot more interesting programme.

As it stands, far too much time spent looking at things, looking out of windows and watching people walk, none of which adds anything to the story or informs us about the characters.

Thinking about it, it's really boring. I thought because it was part of the 'Underbelly' stories it would be tight and gripping showing Australian society from a certain perspective. What I got was a waste of time.

Absolutely love the Underbelly series however this story is definitely not worthy to bear its name. Sure the story is worth telling but could have been given a different name.

The actress that plays Phoebe the ASIC officer needs acting lessons. Her performance is so wooden like she read the script and is just repeating the lines. No emotion whatsoever.

The speculation about what happened to Melissa makes for an absolutely terrible ending. Definitely avoid.

Some legendary and iconic Australian actors in this and doing the best they can with a terrible long, boring, corny and forced script. (Apart from the struggling card board stiff female actor playing the ASIC investigator). A doco or show cut down to less than half the time would have helped. Then would have only wasted only half our time watching it. Shame really, as generally speaking, such a such a waste of talented actors.

Bewildered why they would sell this as Underbelly, the story is/was worthy of making the a movie.

I enjoyed the show in fact hard for me not too with Colin Friels, one of my all time favourite Aussie actors. Also Kate Atkinson, loved her since Sea Change days. Both these two do a good job as usual, unfortunately the casting of them for their respective characters was a poor choice and reflects poorly for them both.

The story and script could have been dramatised to be far more entertaining and the whole thing is messy especially the ending.

Overall worthy of a watch but by no means a gritty underworld story.

6½ rounded up.