The Promise

Really good series, nice and unexpected end! I think the story line with Sarah and her dad is really good.

I read a review comparing this to Spiral and began watching in high hopes. It becomes clear very quickly that this isn't going to attain that high standard. Spiral built up tension and sucked you in. This dissipates tension as unlikely actions and reactions increase in number, eventually rendering the whole thing rather laughable.

We did watch it to the end as our decision to cease came with only 1 episode left. We should have decided sooner!

There are many improbable plot twists in French police thriller 'The Promise', but that's just par for the course. Even before things get silly, however, the basic conceit lost me, due to its essential laziness: a policewoman starts digging into crimes her father, also a cop, had previously investigated; and because she cares, she is also right (or at least, more right than anyone else) about everything and thus justified in doing absolutely nothing by the book. There's a good reason we expect our real detectives to be dispassionate, but the opposite state of affairs is so common in television series it's not only inaccurate, but cliched. For me, 'The Promise' never rises about its hackneyed premise.

Unexpectedly good solidly-acted thriller.

Very impressed.

This really can't be compared to Spiral which apparently is from same production team and the reason I watched.

A female police detective who's bad at her job surely isn't the ideal protagonist for this flawed series.

It just about gets to episode five with some credibility before bringing on a series of risible belly laughs - which is obviously not the audience response the producers are hoping for.

Maybe just one day there will be a detective who has a supportive partner, that would be radical. And that is just one of the many cliches that abound in the poor script.