To Say I Love You: Part 1

I am so lucky to be seeing this series for the first time in 2022.

The first episode was good, but this is on another level. For me Susan Lynch is the highlight here, a superlative performance, and so early on in her career too.

The storyline pulls no punches, whether a programme would be able to be so bold as to what it shows these days, is doubtful, there's no holds barred here at all.

As in the first episode, there's a grim, dark atmosphere that pervades the entire episode. There is dark humour, but for the most part, the grimness is unrelenting.

I feel lucky there's still 9 more stories to go for me, this is brilliant TV, and there's nothing of this quality these days.

The episode still continues with Fitz's disintegrating home life. He meets his wife Barbara is a restaurant but she comes with her therapist, Graham (David Haig) in tow.

Barbara is willing to come back home under certain conditions. He is not happy with Graham who he describes as a textbook therapist. Fitz cannot resist to show off his forensic analytical skills. Part two of that will continue in the next episode. It seems Fitz already had Graham's number.

Fitz also ends up in the police cell as he goes round to Barbara's parents house and harasses them.

At the police station, DS Jimmy Beck wants Fitz to talk to Sean Kerrigan (Andrew Tiernan) a man with a severe stutter who engaged with a joyride in a bus full of passengers. Tagging along was his girlfriend Tina (Susan Lynch.)

Both live in a squat and he owes money to a loan shark. Sean and Tina met while he sang in a karaoke contest, Seans stutter is not an issue when he sings or is angry.

Fitz wants Sean kept for a psychological evaluation but Back ignores him. Soon the loan shark is brutally murdered.

There are nice character hints in this story. You see Fitz talking about horse racing with his mother. Beck has something about him that is nasty under the skin. The way he winds up Sean knowing he has difficulty in speaking.

The Bonnie and Clyde comparisons are not hard to miss in this one. Both Sean and Tina feel like outsiders.

Another great story with good writing and great acting from a top cast including a young stuttering Andrew Tiernan. Acerbic humour and explosive emotions. The only downfall for me is as to whether it could be done in fewer instalments.

Sean and Tina are a desperate duo, battling against anyone and everyone, committing crime after crime, the duo take it up a notch, Fitz is called in to help identify the duo.

A powerful, gritty, hard hitting first episode, I loved that they references Bonnie and Clyde, as it's exactly what we have here, A Manchester set sorry of the two.

Violent, unapologetic, it's a hard hitting first episode, it relies on the awesome talents of Susan Lynch and Andrea Tiernan, and the pair are fantastic.

We learn more about Fitz, his family and work life, but it's the story of the young lovers that make it so watchable.

Expect all sorts here, quite explicit violence, full frontal male nudity, it doesn't shy away from anything, therefore it's not for the faint hearted.

Gritty, 9/10.

Dr Edward Fitzgerald prides himself on many things but being self-effacing would never figure on any list, and it would be a cliche to describe him as his own worse enemy. But he is indeed a walking cliche replete with off the cuff excuses for his behaviour, and people who know him try their best to ignore his protestations.

For college students who have to suffer his lectures, and anyone who has to work with him, this is considerate an absolute necessity.

But for his spouse Barbara Fitzgerald that has never been any kind of viable option, it's a luxury that she has never been able to afford. And her patience is far from inexhaustible as contrary to, popular mythology even saints are loathed to claim perfection.

Two local youths Tina Brien and Sean Kerrigan are outsiders from 'Respectable Polite Society', they forge a common bond out of adversity and mutual necessity, but their shenanigans prove of more than passing interest to the Mancunian Old Bill, providing grist to Fitz's mental mill.