I normally wouldn't have touched this with someone else's dirty barge-pole but due to family circumstances ended up watching the whole first series.
It ticks all the right boxes for contemporary BBC TV drama at the moment, so it's set in the North of England and the hero is a marginalised black man. Nicky is a good cop who has done noble but unpopular things in London and been exiled to the night-shift in faraway Newcastle, struggling to stay morally and chemically clean in a profession in which nobody trusts or respects him. Although unfortunately male, in order to meet the BBC's obligation of comprehensive diversity he also shoulders many of the burdens of a typical, English single mother by raising the son of his dead drug-dealer brother and junkie sister-in-law. It's an everyday story of everyday people you probably recognise from your own family. The series also features a statutory number of the limited group of actors guaranteed endless regular work populating BBC drama series.
I will damn it with the faint praise that it wasn't too bad. There are plenty of irritating aspects like the hero's entirely platonic older male housemate, a sort of Caribbean Obi-Wan Kenobi. Each week he dispenses wisdom to Nicky and his proxy son on issues as profound as the importance of making your own carnival costumes and wearing them in the drizzle on deserted English beaches while no-one else is looking.
The acting isn't all bad, and the hero has a lively relationship with a uniformed policewoman who shares the night shift with him. His love interest is therefore a legal aid solicitor played by Dervla Kirwin, who seems to appear mainly because the BBC is contractually obliged to give her work. The relationship is ludicrous and unconvincing, not least because she was clearly heavily pregnant during filming, and performs with all the subtlety of a barrage balloon wrapped in a cheap red overcoat that fools nobody. Her character has lines in every episode but has no active part in most of the stories, and for reasons obvious to no-one becomes Nicky's lover.
Everything important happens at night and is framed and lit to look like film, to give Newcastle the rain-slick and neon-lit character of late 80s action movies starring Eddie Murphy. This is pretty much the house style at the BBC these days, cutting their cloth to ape the US TV shows that the production teams obviously envy but that BBC schedulers piously refuse to broadcast at prime-time in favour of home-grown clones. A conspiracy within the UK media industry maintains a sad and depressing myth that these stunted six-week outings are much "better" than full 22 episode seasons of shows with decent writing, higher production values and charismatic on-screen talent.
55 Degrees North is a passable but parochial series which also happens to be a very good indication of why millions of UK homes are switching to satellite TV broadcasters where they can find wall-to-wall US imports.
It ticks all the right boxes for contemporary BBC TV drama at the moment, so it's set in the North of England and the hero is a marginalised black man. Nicky is a good cop who has done noble but unpopular things in London and been exiled to the night-shift in faraway Newcastle, struggling to stay morally and chemically clean in a profession in which nobody trusts or respects him. Although unfortunately male, in order to meet the BBC's obligation of comprehensive diversity he also shoulders many of the burdens of a typical, English single mother by raising the son of his dead drug-dealer brother and junkie sister-in-law. It's an everyday story of everyday people you probably recognise from your own family. The series also features a statutory number of the limited group of actors guaranteed endless regular work populating BBC drama series.
I will damn it with the faint praise that it wasn't too bad. There are plenty of irritating aspects like the hero's entirely platonic older male housemate, a sort of Caribbean Obi-Wan Kenobi. Each week he dispenses wisdom to Nicky and his proxy son on issues as profound as the importance of making your own carnival costumes and wearing them in the drizzle on deserted English beaches while no-one else is looking.
The acting isn't all bad, and the hero has a lively relationship with a uniformed policewoman who shares the night shift with him. His love interest is therefore a legal aid solicitor played by Dervla Kirwin, who seems to appear mainly because the BBC is contractually obliged to give her work. The relationship is ludicrous and unconvincing, not least because she was clearly heavily pregnant during filming, and performs with all the subtlety of a barrage balloon wrapped in a cheap red overcoat that fools nobody. Her character has lines in every episode but has no active part in most of the stories, and for reasons obvious to no-one becomes Nicky's lover.
Everything important happens at night and is framed and lit to look like film, to give Newcastle the rain-slick and neon-lit character of late 80s action movies starring Eddie Murphy. This is pretty much the house style at the BBC these days, cutting their cloth to ape the US TV shows that the production teams obviously envy but that BBC schedulers piously refuse to broadcast at prime-time in favour of home-grown clones. A conspiracy within the UK media industry maintains a sad and depressing myth that these stunted six-week outings are much "better" than full 22 episode seasons of shows with decent writing, higher production values and charismatic on-screen talent.
55 Degrees North is a passable but parochial series which also happens to be a very good indication of why millions of UK homes are switching to satellite TV broadcasters where they can find wall-to-wall US imports.