Flickerater

Good casting and acting throughout, especially Martin Freeman who is excellent as usual. Good production and camera work though the cutaways are too frequent and jarring.

The plots are ridiculously overblown. Every one is an unlikely scheme within another even more unlikely plot, all overseen by a master villain with seemingly unlimited powers around the city, able to wire anyone with explosive vests and keep a sniper rifle trained on them 24/7 etc etc. By all these deus ex machine-gun artifices endless difficulties are created and solved - though never quite - so incessantly that it becomes tedious.

So - I give it a 7 for the good parts but could not get beyond four episodes.

I recommend instead the excellent and deservedly long-running Sherlock Holmes series "Elementary". Or the non-Holmes and too-little known detective series "C. B. Strike" which has clever and complex but believable plots, outstanding direction and acting, and a very likeable lead.

Both of those series are much better than this pretentious, over-plotted and overwrought production.

Without the acting, which is universally stellar, and some fine scenery, there would nothing to recommend here.

The plot uses misdirection as a crutch, constantly having characters speak confusingly just to muddy the water. There are endless heart-to-hearts ultimately signifying... nothing. In fact the whole threadbare weakly-imagined plot signifies nothing and leads to nothing.

The direction is generally good - clearly getting the best out of the cast - but the camera often goes too close and lingers too long on faces as a cheap way to pretend at meaning.

Way overrated. A "7" at most, except for a class on acting.

It has a good concept; a pretty good script; a good cast; and great production.

But too often the actors move and deliver their lines woodenly. Actress Lucy Liu, who did so well in the top series "Elementary", seems to have forgotten all timing and nuance. Reid Scott (excellent in Veep) is still excellent here, but he's more of the exception.

I don't know the other actors but they can't all be bad.

So I think it's the direction. Making too sure that we "get it". You can see it this in the camera work too.

This gets tiring. You want it to bubble and be clever and surprising, but every line is telegraphed.

Thus, a good idea poorly, or at least not well, executed.