Christina Hendricks and Paddy Considine are great in this, along with Susan Lynch and other cast members, but the script flatlines and the comedy doesn't quite get there.
O'Dowd's direction and script make it a bit wooden and clunky. You are always waiting for the killer laughs, the key character moments, the unique Irish craic, but it never arrives.
It's watchable, but it will leave you with a sense of unfulfilled potential. Key relationships just take too long to establish, some great character potential is lost because the moment of spark is missing in the script. The actors are forced to act on, dragging out the awkwardness that's not necessarily good for the character, and leaving the viewer frustrated at the missed opportunity to take them further into the storyline.
The cast saved whatever elements of this that made it watchable but they clearly struggled with O'Dowd's flat script.
There just wasn't that link between comedy, plot and irishness that often makes these types of series work.
I think there's an age old lesson that O'Dowd has forgotten here, don't try and do everything yourself. Sometimes you need a critical friend (or two) on the project and this felt that it was the result of nobody being able to say "try that again" to the the ubiquitous O'Dowd.
Maybe a fresh director and a good script adaptation would revive it.
I hope so, there was something in there that O'Dowd just couldn't tease out.
