markfranh

And that really sums it up.

If I could leave it there I would as it seems a waste of time to write more but IMDB has a minimum length for reviews so I shall continue.

The Guardian newspaper did a review of this when it came out and gave it only 1 star out of a possible 5. Frankly, I don't think that's fair.

1 star is generous. But perhaps their system doesn't allow for less?

There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about this. My wife and I lasted around 10 minutes of the first episode and we only managed that long because neither of us wanted to be the first to speak up and say, "what rubbish".

We loved the original British version and watched that series twice.

But this? All we are seeing is the lead doing a very bad impression of Ricky Gervais doing David Brent. And I do mean very bad.

She has added absolutely nothing to the role or the character so why bother.

Jokes fall flat and that's if they were intend to be jokes as it was hard to tell.

Please don't waste your time.

I see IMDB viewers have rated it 4.3 as of when I'm writing. That too seems generous.

I give it 2 stars and I'm really not sure why I've ranked it that highly.

I love this show.

However, my wife and I just hated this episode and it probably would rank as the weakest of the 30 or so episodes that have gone to air so far.

It opens promissingly enough. Raphael regains consciousness in a car (a the driver) with a cut to her head from where it made contact with the steering wheel when the car crashed. The camera retreats so that we see the car has crashed into a concrete construction barrier.

Beside her is a man sitting head down in the passenger seat. When the ambulance arrives and Raph is getting treated, we learn that not only is the man dead but that he is dead from a gunshot.

Unfortunately, Raph seems to have amnesia due to the concussion she sustained in the accident so can not explain anything and has no memory of the events leading up to her presence in the car or why the dead man is next to her.

I'm giving away no spoilers there as this is all in the opening two minutes.

Naturally Coste becomes a suspect (obviously!) and the episode proceeds from there. Friends come to her rescue to help find the truth while an investigator is appointed who wants to arrest her. All very predictable.

Intriguing scenario. One is left wondering how this opening scene all came about knowing all will be revealed by the end of the hour.

Except it isn't.

Sure, we eventually learn who the dead man is, who killed him, why he was killed and all of that just as you would expect in this sort of show.

Amazingly, the explanation in the ending for the murder does not in any way explain how Coste ends up sitting in the driver's seat of the car having crashed it into the concrete barrier with the dead man sitting in the passenger seat.

In fact, with the ending that is giving, it is absolutely impossible to contruict any scenario that could possibly have led to the scene viewers see in the opening two minutes. The opening scene is totally inconsistent with the events that we later learn that actually happened leading up to and right after the murder.

It's just stupid, sad to say.

I'd invite others to watch, absord and understand the details of the murder that are revealed, and then think back on the opening and try to construct some sort of explanation as to how the opening scene comes about. Good luck to you!

So ... very disappointing and so inconsistent with the usual fairly high quality plots this show has produced in earlier episodes.

What an awful way to end season 4 on such a low note.

Good news is that there will be a season 5 and it has already begun shooting and presumably will be going to air later this year. A chance for redemption perhaps.

Well that caught your attention but what do I mean by that?

My wife and have enjoyed Robert Thorogood's Death in Paradise for years and for the last couple of years Beyond Paradise as well. He's written over 100 episodes of Death in Paradise alone and it just amazes us that he continues to come up with different ways to kill people and (almost) stump the police until Neville or Humphrey or whoever eventually finds the solution. He's a brilliant writer or at least constructor of mystery scenarios.

And to be fair, the actual murder scenario in this two part series is very good. Yes, it was stolen from a very famous earlier piece that I won't name as it would be a spoiler but it doesn't detract from the plot. That isn't the problem.

Unfortunately, the problem lies with the investigation. The whole thing was such a disappointment that had us cringing at times because it was so ridiculous.

We're all used to the concept of an amateur or group of amateurs investigating and solving murders. It's a standard of the crime genre both in novels and on television series.

However, this only works if at least one or more of a number of conditions exist. Just to name a few:

1) the amateurs have some special expertise/skill that the police don't have 2) the amateurs have special knowledge of the crime that they can't get the police to take note of for whatever reason.

3) the police are incompetent 4) the police refuse to listen to the amateurs on the grounds the amateurs are indeed amateurs and should leave it to the professionals. This usually works best in period pieces and/or where the police are prejudiced against women or race.

5) The police have already investigated the "crime" and have concluded the death was accidental or suicide and don't want amateurs muddying their closed investigation.

6) A small town police force is involved which lacks the resources to do an investigation properly.

7) The novel or show is being done for comedy

I'm sure there other scenarios as well.

Here's a few examples of where amateurs investigating a murder actually do work:

The classic without compare, of course, is Sherlock Holmes who has the intellect and skills that the police don't have where even the police will admit he is their superior and welcome his assistance. That certainly doesn't apply here. Technically, he's an amateur but nevertheless an amateur whose involvement is credible.

Agatha Christie's Miss Marple where the murders usually occur in a small town where the police are out of their depth and where Miss Marple's special gift for understanding human nature from her advanced age gives her the insight to eventually work out the motive and who the guilty party is. That's not the case here.

Father Brown, where the local detective invariably arrests the wrong person week after week (a formula in its writing and borderline light comedy) and where Father Brown needs to investigate to insure an injustice isn't done.

J. K. Rowling's (Robert Galbraith) Cormoron Strike The Cuckoo Calls where the police have concluded the death was suicide and where the brother of the deceased pays a private detective to investigate. That's certainly not the case here in any sense. Strike, again, an amateur but at least he is a PI and his involvement is paid and against the wishes of the police who feel the matter is closed.

The 2012 series The Betchley Circle with murders set in post war London where a group of ex Betchley Park women (whose special intellectual gifts were recognized during the war but are ignored post-war) end up investigating as the police think a women's place is in the home. Not the case here.

Agatha Raisin where again the senior detective is an idiot and Agatha finds herself investigating to find the real killer and indeed eventually sets up her own private investigation business. Helps that the series is a bit of a comedy and never to be taken too seriously. Again, not really what's going on here. I'm not an Agatha Raison fan but at least it was better than this series!

Here we have three real amateurs (a dog walker, the wife of the local vicker and a retired archaeologist!) taking it upon themselves to investigate even though the police force is well resourced and are quite willing to listen to any facts the women have in order to further their investigation. They continually put themselves in danger for absolutely no good reason even though providing the facts to the DS at the police would have served to solve the crime eventually as she was happy to listen to any facts they had found but constantly begged them not to put themselves into such danger.

It just doesn't work and had us pounding our heads on nearby walls in total frustration at how ludicrous it all was. We only continued to watch because the actual mystery of the murders was intriguing and we wanted to know the who and the how. It was just so annoying to have it being investigated by these three women when this would have been great as a two part Death in Paradise episode or even as a standalone series with the young and inexperienced female DS solving it eventually!!!

If it had been played for comedy, it might have worked. If the local police had been idiots, it might have worked but that wasn't the case. If the lead DS had been a bigotted 64 year old male who hated women it would have worked but not when the lead DS is a woman herself keen to hear what the 3 amateurs had to say; it didn't work! If the women had had some sort of special skill set the police lacked it might have worked but not this dog walker, housewife and retired archaelogist.

It occurred to me early in the second episode when the three women strut into the police station wearing their special badges as newly appointed police assistants that this really should have come with an R12 rating: restricted to those under the age of 12 as that seemed who it was aimed at. Better yet, more believable as a tv series aimed specifically at teenagers based on three young teenage girls investigating where the police had proved themselves to be idiots and the kids were going to be the heroes; that would have worked wonderfully for a teenage audience..

The final scene with Judith is just absurd. She really had to sit in that house alone knowing what was going to happen? She couldn't, say, have had her friends and a few policemen waiting in the back room for the killer to arrive and confess? No, no, no, she had to face the killer by herself, unarmed and simply hoping throwing something in his face would be enough to turn the tables on the killer? How stupid are we supposed to be?

I'm sorry to have to be scathing but this deserved it. I can only assume that those few people who have given it a high rating early after it went to air are those who are either teenagers themselves or perhaps are the inevitable fake reviews that turn up from time to time on IMDB to encourage people to watch. Sorry, I'm probably being unkind to teenagers in saying that as nobody in their right mind, teenagers included, could watch this and felt it worthy of such praise as I was reading in those reviews.