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.

With the cold case squad disbanded, Doctor Eve Lockhart takes up a new role, continuing the work on her body farm.

For me, Waking the dead is one of, if not the best of The Detective shows, it's now a good few years since it ended, and it still packs a punch, time has been kind to it, I always thought this would be an extension of that great show, it isn't.

It's decent, and definitely worth a look, but it's just a bit off, Eve feels like a whole new character, in Waking the dead, she was quirky, the outsider, here she's very much part of the main crowd, Oggy fulfils the quirky role, she's just lost something, not that I'm taking away anything from Tara Fitzgerald, her acting as always is spot on.

Episode four is particularly good, it does stand out, some of the others unfortunately, are just uninteresting.

I didn't particularly like Hale, he's no Peter Boyd, nor should he be, but Allen just didn't feel right in the part, he's a much better villain. Wunmi Mosaku was wasted here, her character was a little blank.

It doesn't surprise me that it only lasted a single series, it could, and should have been so much better.

6/10.

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.

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.

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...