paudman

I had heard a lot about this programme so sat down over three nights to watch it. It may have started off interestingly enough - after all, there was a murder, and the arrest and Police procedure believed we were leading up to something, but after that... it was like a soap opera. Too much family life, too much totally-unrelated and irrelevant crap - and too simple, for example where the friend admits it was his knife. Why? The family trip in the van for paint had me reaching for the fast-forward button... on and on and on... and the last two episodes each with a rubbish droney dirge going on, and on, and on at the end. That's getting into too many series these days. Condense it down to two, maybe three episodes and it would have been punchy; four was just too drawn out, and like watching the paint on the van dry.

Somewhere in all this, there's a story. I watched it as a followup to 1883 but feel that, like The Empire Strikes Back, it's merely a filler between two better parts. It started off fine: we have cattlemen fighting the sheep herders and trying to hold onto their land despite changing times. We had a gun battle, now we've got a war BUT like the Great War which just ended, it must be happening far away. Here we have Spencer and Alex, they make love a lot. And here again. And here again. And here again. It goes on, and on, and on. OH GOD NOT AGAIN. Do we really need to have it go on for so long? Somewhere in between we have the newly weds going at it, both pre and post marriage vows. And it too goes on, and on, and on. We're grownups, we know what they're doing. Not surprising the ranchers are losing their land, the others fight while they hop from bed to bed interminably and all we see is a lot of kissing then interminable post-coital talk. The one saving feature is that the ranchers are Irish so they can't blame the British for anything and everything (although according to Helen Mirren they came from Ireland to escape poverty and ended up being given a huge ranch), and the sheep herders are Scots, but it goes on longer and more slowly than John Dutton's recovery. Somewhere in between we have Native Indians being beaten by nuns but this part of the story is taking longer to knit up with the rest than Dutton's bones. I want to see how it ends but I feel I'll be glad when it does and we can move on to Yellowstone.