morgan-659-312842

It's only recently that I had even heard of this show. I read very positive reviews on a number of sites but when I came to watch the first series I struggled to maintain interest and eventually gave up. After a while I decided to give it another go and this time I was completely taken by it. It is on another level from most space based series. Only Dark Matter, which was probably made for 1% of the budget for The Expanse, is as much fun. Other reviewers have given full reports on why this show is so good so I'll just say that, for me, almost nothing else compares and I will be watching it all over again soon.

I was encouraged to watch this by a review in a national newspaper which essentially put it in the same basket as Ludwig. And it had Timothy Spall as the central character! Couldn't be better! Actually it could. It could be a thousand times better and still be hanging on to Ludwig's coat-tails. Just about everything is wrong with this effort. The writing is just downright poor, splattered with extremely lame jokes and suffering from an absence of any semblance of mystery. As for the acting, Mr Spall excepted of course, was diabolical. After 5 minutes I was already tired of the lead female character. The others were even worse. Overall, a complete waste of time.

I can't compare this with the original as it is many years since I watched the first but it doesn't matter as this film does stand alone. At 2hrs 14 min. It is at least 45 minutes too long. The length of the film necessitates a considerable amount of padding which occasionally drags your finger towards the fast forward button. The special effects aren't bad - not excellent but acceptable. It's best not to comment on dialogue if watching the English subtitled version as it's not terribly convincing. The characters range from likeable to not very. The not very could easily have been left out as they add little to the story and are very annoying. It would have been better to have the others pursue the story on their own. The acting varies considerably ranging from quite good to poor and there is a fair amount of over-acting especially with the annoying characters. As for tension, well that barely exists as so much time is taken up with arguing and chatting that any build up of excitement tends to dissipate. There a lot of little things like characters pressing a button or pulling a lever and then pointing at it which to some viewers might seem amusing or odd. Maybe that's what Japanese workers really do. Overall this is somewhat drab, unexciting and seemingly never-ending.