The Body Farm

It started badly but became quite compelling towards the end. Implausible in parts, with strange amateurish scientists and a lone detective inspector investigating a crime that would have had the book thrown at it in real life. Contrived characters. But an interesting plot and some good ideas. I shall watch the second episode before deciding whether it's worth it. My son was less impressed and I don't think he'll bother watching any more. As for me, I'm interested to see whether the cardboard cutout characters get fleshed out a bit in subsequent episodes. The quality of the plot is high, the script doesn't do it justice and the jerky direction left me cold in places, but still I watched it to the end so they must have something right.

We were blessed there was only one season, and that season one ended after 6 episodes with nothing more.

So now, I must continue to write something to fill up a required "150 characters?" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23... 999 1000 1001 1002 1003 1004 1005 1006 1007 1008 1009...

Well acted, well written, a little preachy at times but not in an annoying way. Didn't know this was a spinoff until I caught a rerun of waking the dead and it clicked. There really are no happy endings here, but they are still satisfying nonetheless.

I expected more from this BBC production. The acting was wooden and with so many off-point moments. A deaf character who needs to lip read, yet looking down or away when being spoken to, still fully grasping the dialogue. Fantastical leaps in forensic deduction with no supporting evidence. The scientists must be psychic as none of the evidence links up. So many stereotypes, the maverick policeman, the mad scientist off his meds and experimenting on himself, the feisty, femanist female scientist. Seriously. All in a backdrop of a dirty, run-down farmhouse turned laboratory/body farm. None of the scientific findings would be valid due to cross-contamination from the dirt and people living and eating in the labs. Truly toe-curlingly bad.

as a spin off from "waking the dead" simply one of the best and consistent BBC dramas ever i was expecting this to be somewhat better. clearly not by the same team that wrote waking the dead, this is a good idea for a series but poorly executed.

the episode plots are sound in principle, but the body farm scientists are supposed to be just that, scientists - so why are they doing interviews, involved with arrests etc? And the science is hardly integral to the episodes - we start off with a hook, but the rest of the episode involves lots of contrived and implausible police work by a lone detective, interviewing everyone either at the body farm or in public, backed up by moralistic team of clichéd scientists, who love to talk about what is right and wrong and throwing opinions (not scientific facts) around and who spend very little time doing what they might be expected to do, (a couple of DNA samples here and there, a couple of hairs found here and there), but what about the body farm itself, where we might expect that some of the research there might play a part in the unfolding episodes. well the body farm barely gets a mention, and plays little part in the science or plot unfolding.

there's little evidence to suggest this will be picked up for a second series!