nhkerr

Loved Westworld, the writing for which was elegant and clever, everything that the script and plot of this one isn't. The bad dialogue and an uber-corny romance story meant that it wasn't that great a film, which is a shame because it could have been. The scenario and the world they present is scarily believable and I'd love to see someone make a decent film in this setting. It looks like Reminiscence was a commercial apocalypse though, so not much hope of that.

I have never understood why people are so quick to jump to the 1/10 score. The 1970 Film 'Trog', arguably one of the worst films ever made, gets an average of 3.6 so, even if you are hyper critical of some of the shortcomings of this series, it is clearly not 1/10.

Without giving another plot synopsis, the story is a London police drama underpinned by the knowledge of the protagonists, of the inevitable extinction of life on earth in 5 years.

I tend to be quite critical of procedurals that have outlandish and unbelievable plot elements. With this one though, as long as you buy the main premise (and that requires a certain suspension of disbelief), the extremity of the situation takes the focus off most details that could trip up the more nit-picky mind. So I for one was generally swept along.

What helps this is the pace and intensity of the programme. It is undoubtedly a high-adrenaline drama, with few gaps to take a breath. The music criticised by some commenters have for being too noisy (really?!) was well matched to the unrelenting tempo of the plot.

The casting and acting were both suitable to the drama, with a really convincing performance from Agnyess Deyn. Stylised it certainly was, but it was stylised well, so I really cant see that as a criticism.

There were a few niggles. I don't think the editing was brilliant. The various serial killer sub-plots were very variable in detail and the one in the last episode seemed almost throw-away. I got the feeling that they had had to scrunch the series down to 6 episodes having originally filmed for more.

Also how silence about such a life ending event could be maintained at all, and the ease with which the newspaper release in the first episode was quashed, strain the credulity a bit.

Anyway that's my tuppence worth. There's no accounting for taste, but I wish people would avoid rushing to unnecessarily harsh scoring. It ruins the system as a guide.

Oh my god the dialogue is bad. It's like a really up-itself special edition of 'the bill'. The script seems to have been written using a random British cop show cliché generator. This doesn't reflect well on the quality cast - I really wish Gina McKee wasn't in it because I like her as an actor, similarly Adrian Dunbar, whose career is clearly not going as well as it should be given his acting calibre.

'Hilton is the one who cares about ticking boxes -I care about cracking cases!' It really reminds me of the Mitchell and Webb TV drama makers. The problem for this sort of thing is that the bar has been set so much higher for TV drama these days. BBC needs to do better.