The Red King

The set-up resembles 1973 British folk horror film The Wicker Man. But by Episode 2, you should have noticed that not all is the same. And things diverge from there.

I also found the 1973 film was spoiled by having Edward Woodward as the policeman. He was stamped on my mind as tough-guy Callan. It took time to realise that this was a very different sort of character. Not someone like Brownlow from The Bill, but fussy and pious. One reason why it was unpopular at the time.

Here, the police lady is quite tough, and shown to be a stickler for the rules. Sent to a bad posting from something that offended other police - just what comes out by stages.

Watch and enjoy.

Mum and I watched this together and both felt it got off to a powerful start and then began to lag by about episode 3. The main part could have done with a better actress, let's be honest. We felt her character was also badly written; her running around like a bull in a China shop without any precaution or reserve soon became wearisome. Towards the end her character took a highly unbelievable full-turn. The plot-holes in the story became far more evident also, which meant the climax was not as exciting. Despite all of this criticism it was still worth a watch and was at least a far better alternative than the Hollywood sequel of the Wicker Man.

Grace, Anjli Mohindra, is a police sergeant transfered, as a punishment, to replace Guffud,Mark Lewis Jones, the recently retired sergeant on a remote island off the Welsh coast. She is in charge of the entire island force. That is her and a constable, Owen, played by James Bamford.

This series has obvious similarities to the classic film 'the Wicker Man' with a solitary outsider police officer and a local population unwelcoming to incomers, although in this case Grace does slowly get Owen on side in the investigation of a local boy who went missing a year previously. She conducts a search of the island and inevitably finds a body and challenges Guffud on his inept handling of the investigation when he was in charge.

Trying to get the truth from a population that all seem to be members of a weird cult and spend much of their time wearing strange masks. Full marks to Grace for taking up the challenge.

I enjoyed this series and found Anjili Mohindra a very engaging character and definitely wanted her to suceed.

Who needs originality! This has every cliché known to man - accept that and just enjoy this near fabulous entertainment.

The plot isn't too dissimilar to HOT FUZZ - a strait laced, by-the-book police officer is posted to an idyllic yet decidedly weird isolated community. It's populated by a collection of marvellously over the top stereotypes who seemingly all hate the new arrival. There's weird rituals, lots of thunder and lightning, the predictable sound of crows squawking in the fog and then we get the murder.

It's a complete rip-off of every spooky police story from WICKER MAN to SCOOBY DOO but it does it so well it's almost fabulous. The team behind this really know what they're doing and have essentially made "a best of" every quirky suspense tv show in the last twenty years.

Once you've finished moaning about the utter unoriginality of this you'll probably love it. Although completely formulaic, it's really professionally made to be entertaining. The acting is spot on and very naturalistic making this nonsense seem entirely believable. Super-gorgeous Anjli Mohindra plays the Simon Pegg type up tight police officer complete with the usual issues all police detectives seem to have in every other tv show. She tackles her crazily over complicated character with gusto and although she's a real pain in the bum, she's such a superb actress that you're immediately on her side.

Not a bad creepy folk horror set on a Welsh island complete with weird rituals, cults and masks. Some parts of the script are pretty ropey but the main problem is the lead actress. Where the rest of the cast are good-servicable, the lead actress/detective is so wooden it's distracting. It's like she walked in off the street and each of her scenes were done in one take! This does lead to some unintentionally funny scenes though.

Having said that, I quite enjoyed it, it's fun and keeps you guessing and there aren't really any "filler episodes" where not much happens which seems to occur in a a lot of series these days.

Give it a go if your in the mood for a creepy, british whodunnit.