Protection

A family in the care of DI Liz Nyles is gunned down at their safe house, just before they are due to give evidence against big shot criminal Edward Crowther. Liz has been having an affair with fellow officer DS Paul Brandice, is it possible her affair compromised the family?

It's an excellent drama series, if Line of Duty and similar dramas are your thing, then this will very much be up your Street, it has all the hallmarks, intensity, shocks, surprises, dodgy coppers, it's all there.

It doesn't dip, it maintains its intensity throughout, after an explosive first episode, the intrigue continues, very good all the way through to the excellent series finale.

At times you will need to suspend your disbelief, as there are a few moments that'll have you scratching your head, wondering how on Earth.

It's wonderful to see Siobhan Finneran playing a leading role, she's such a versatile actress, there's nothing she cannot do, there's big news at the moment that Benidorm is due to return, hopefully we'll see Janice back.

Super supporting cast including Jonathan Cake, Alex Newman and the wonderful David Hayman.

Catherine Kelly's character is loathsome, talented actress, but DI Wheatley is horrid.

I'd love to see Nyles return for a second series.

8/10.

As usual, as the plot thickens, the supposedly capable characters start doing stupid things to make it last longer?

I would say that the beginning episodes are the best, the last ones revolve around stupidity by characters. (Like why are they no using prepaid phones, not removing the sim cards, not saving information to an outside cloud,) and the list goes on...

Some good acting by supporting characters, main actor is not even in good enough shape to run without having a stunt double. Much better than American shows. More complex, more interesting. I would recommend if you ignore the logic flaws.

Another great British police story with a brilliant Siobhan Finneran as always. She has really turned into one of my favourite actresses. The story line keeps you engaged throughout the episodes and without too many plotholes as well. I watched it over a couple of days and never felt bored at any point of time. It's really amazing how these Britt's can come up with one exiting series after another in this specific. If you liked Happy Valley and some of the other similar police stories you will definitely also enjoy this one. Without revealing the story I can say that the plot and the ending also was well crafted indeed. Highly recommended!!

Even her turn in "Alma's not Normal" is excellent.

I have a feeling today's writers are stuck in the SAME tropes. This one uses at least 3 of them. The bratty kid, but wait, there are two in this one. The dementia riddled horrible father, who, surprisingly seems to have clarity at the right times, and of course, the bad bedfellow.

This was a, let's throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Unfortunately, this turns into 6 episodes of non-sense, with the typical 'baddie' guy and his voice, deciphering from his first scene, that he is not just a passing character whom information needs to garnered and forgotten about. Why can't these writers pick anyone of the real life stories that are so hard to believe these days, and build on this?

Siobhan is Liz. She is entrusted with a family in the witness protection and as zero spoilers will tell you, this goes tits up. Liz's sister is seen for a scene and then dunzo...Her superiors are awful humans, those of which can not be modeled on anyone remotely passable (and yet, there are 3!!), all awful. This is doing the laundry watching...hardly engaging.

I am disappointed by a couple of issues in this series. To begin with how can these professional witness protectors fail to check the girl's backpack where she has a surf tablet, not believable. Then the scene where the room in the hospital is left totally unguarded leading to yet another death. Professional witness protectors, no wonder people don't want to be witnesses.

The acting is really good, the intrigue is quite gripping and the story line is quite good however the issues I mentioned are enough to make me give the program such a low rating.

A sad reflection is that the amount of crime solving programs from all countries that involve corrupt police must be an indication that corruption within police forces worldwide is very common and very worrying.