Reviews

In the opening scene of the film the viewer gets a glimpse of the red painted Millthorpe Working Men's club. It's closed down-no longer in operation sending the viewer a message that you can never go home again. The creators of this series and Disney should have heeded the message. Sequels when done correctly can work to extend the original story. What the writers of this sequel did was piggyback on the popularity of the original film to present a series totally devoid of any of the charm, wit, comedy, or entertainment value of the original. It is/was simply a quick cash grab for all involved.

I had to research the ages of writers Simon Beaufoy and Alice Nutter because I thought the script was written by a couple of millennials. I was surprised that they are both middle aged writers. Hard to believe this is the same Simon Beaufoy who wrote the 1997 film.

While I won't comment on all the problematic parts of the series, I will touch on a few of the big ones. Notably the story lines that were shoehorned in for the sake of DEI such as the African artist who is being medicated for good reason btw..-as to not cause harm to others-yet we are supposed to be sympathetic with Gaz weaning him off his meds? Ridiculous story line which was not only implausible but irresponsible. 1997 Gaz would have nothing to do with this guy and would have kept well away. Midway though the series we get introduced to a asylum seeking family-again shoehorned in with no connection of explanation how this ties to the story. All asylum seekers are good honest people and UK really just needs to open its borders to anyone who wants to live there. Again-what does this have to do with the story?

Dave and Jean -both who have a connection to the original story got horrible treatment. She has turned into a cold, mean middle aged adulteress-the warmth and love she had for Dave is clearly gone. They suffered a tragedy yet its not explained until the final episode.

It's Disney so to appeal to the kids out there to watch this dreck-a bunch of annoying school aged children were shoehorned into the story-I can't share too much about this part as I fast forwarded through all of their scenes-something about the school falling apart, singing and a dog. Again, not interested and who cares. Why not focus more on Nath and his family and his relationship with his Dad and his physically challenged son.

The writers then turned Horse, a man who in the 1997 film clearly had a large extended family into a geriatric loner who the Council turned homeless. This would never happen-elderly people in the UK have Age Concern, and many social advocate groups that would have stepped in-this story line was not realistic or convincing.

Lomper and his partner and the bird storyline? Was this the best they could do? What a waste and the storyline was ridiculous and trite. There was no glue to hold these guys together -the finding the bird scenes were not funny at all.

Lastly what I hated most about this series is a bunch of normal everyday guys with normal everyday problems have been turned into social justice superheroes. Why? The charm of the 1997 film was that these were just everyday guys trying to make some money-not get involved in the social problems of strangers. If I could give this series -0/0 I would as that is all it deserves.

As other reviewers have noted there isn't much about this series that makes sense. The behaviour of the Vicar especially is not realistic as a man of the cloth his choices don't ring true. But any excuse to watch David Tennant mine his craft. It would have been helpful to see more of the backstory of the relationship between the Vicar and Edgar--why he felt so compelled to help him--rather than expose him and perhaps save the lives abused children? The supporting cast were ok--the journalist being the weakest actor of them all she just wasn't convincing and as others have mentioned her attempt to interview Stanley Tucci's character was weak and not what you would expect from an experienced journalist. On a positive note, if you can turn your brain off for 4 hours this series is definitely entertaining and you will catch yourself yelling at the screen many times as the characters do the most stupid things you could imagine. I doubt a second series will be made but I would watch it with a new show runner and writer with the focus on Stanley Tucci's character playing a jail house Columbo.

Killing Eve should have ended at season 3. The whole of season 4 was wasted time--especially the first two episodes with the pastor & daughter it only slightly picked up on the third episode and by the eighth I was done. Why do villains need to find redemption? Just let them be villains. V was good at killing without remorse. Stop trying to turn villains into sympathetic characters. The final episode was a huge disappointment. So many unanswered questions about the twelve, who killed Kenny and too little, too late with V and Eve. Comer was terribly underused in season 4 compared with season 1 and too much screen time was wasted on pointless new characters.