Having basically burnt all his bridges in London by grassing the illegal activities of a colleague, Nicky Cole takes a Detective's job in the Newcastle police force. However he is barely welcome there and he is stuck on night duty with no sign of being moved to days. With an uncle and a young nephew at home, Nicky is kept busy but he still manages to do his job and proves to be a very able detective. Solving cases brings him into conflict with prosecutor Claire Maxwell but also into a partnership with Sergeant Rick Astel.
I'm not the sort of person who would usually watch this type of drama TV series, fairly clichéd and acting like a sort of entertainment 'fast food' does the job without thrills but is hardly the sort of thing that really satisfies my taste buds. However I do like Don Gilet so I figured I'd give this a go as it is rare that he gets a large role (lead role) in a mainstream drama like this one. The plot is very clichéd and, in some regards, predictable but to be honest, why did you expect from a mainstream BBC drama on a Tuesday night? It is fluff all that matters is that it is at least entertaining fluff. In that regard it more or less manages to be interesting enough and enjoyable enough to do the job. It has a slight swagger to it and the basic structure is familiar enough to never tax your brain so it more or less does what its audience would expect it to do.
However it IS a bit too clichéd and clunky. If you can't see a romance on the cards from the first scene then you are very forgiving or very naïve. The dialogue is also very plodding at times and is too quick to sink into unrealistic lines which only exist in the mind of an average scriptwriter. This scriptwriter also gives us characters that are drawn in a very easy and lazy fashion Nicky is very upright, he is cool, looks after a friend's child, is honest as the day is long and is good to those who don't deserve it and never gives up on a case no matter how closed it seems! Likewise Claire is dutiful but is won over by Nicky; the other cops are comic, corrupt etc etc. It never really gets any better than this at all but I didn't expect any more than this and I was more or less able to enjoy it. The plot is quite interesting outside of the standard stuff and they have done a nice job of threading a few good crimes together.
Of course it is still prime time filler that lacks imagination and you shouldn't expect too much. He stuff of corruption comes into it but it is all very black/white and simplistic, don't be expecting any of the complexities of The Shield or other cop imports in fact this really pales when you view it in comparison to the current crop of US imports in the UK. The one thing I really didn't like about the series was related to it being black/white it constantly plays the race card. From the opening scene where Nicky is pulled over and assaulted by the police for being black, the series keeps coming back to the 'you guys' stuff and, because it is not used well at all, it soon becomes tiring. Make a challenging drama about police racism if you wish but don't just throw it in because your character happens to be black. In some episodes it never raises its head but in other it is practically an obsession!
Gilet is more or less the reason the show was entertaining as he is effortlessly charismatic and manages to cover the fact that his character is too basic and very poorly developed. He is a coolly guy, easy to look at and he makes for appealing lead character. Kirwan is terrible. Her delivery is flat and lifeless and she seems to have just decided that, if the script isn't going to bother then neither will she. Dunn is OK but many UK viewers will find it hard to forget his much better role as Alistair Campbell in the Rory Bremner show! Rodska, Hodgson and Morfitt are all fairly poor just mugging along in resistant roles, and Harris gets old quickly with his dispensing of wisdom and subplots.
Overall this is a British bit of primetime fluff but one that can be enjoyed as such due to some OK plotting and a good lead role from Gilet, who never lest the inadequacies of his script and character get in the way of a charismatic performance. However an obsession with racism, clichés, poor dialogue and predictable/lazy subplots all drag it down to the level of 'passable' and, compared with the smart US cop shows currently showing in the UK, this series is a little bit of an embarrassment. But it is harmless viewing for a Tuesday night.
I'm not the sort of person who would usually watch this type of drama TV series, fairly clichéd and acting like a sort of entertainment 'fast food' does the job without thrills but is hardly the sort of thing that really satisfies my taste buds. However I do like Don Gilet so I figured I'd give this a go as it is rare that he gets a large role (lead role) in a mainstream drama like this one. The plot is very clichéd and, in some regards, predictable but to be honest, why did you expect from a mainstream BBC drama on a Tuesday night? It is fluff all that matters is that it is at least entertaining fluff. In that regard it more or less manages to be interesting enough and enjoyable enough to do the job. It has a slight swagger to it and the basic structure is familiar enough to never tax your brain so it more or less does what its audience would expect it to do.
However it IS a bit too clichéd and clunky. If you can't see a romance on the cards from the first scene then you are very forgiving or very naïve. The dialogue is also very plodding at times and is too quick to sink into unrealistic lines which only exist in the mind of an average scriptwriter. This scriptwriter also gives us characters that are drawn in a very easy and lazy fashion Nicky is very upright, he is cool, looks after a friend's child, is honest as the day is long and is good to those who don't deserve it and never gives up on a case no matter how closed it seems! Likewise Claire is dutiful but is won over by Nicky; the other cops are comic, corrupt etc etc. It never really gets any better than this at all but I didn't expect any more than this and I was more or less able to enjoy it. The plot is quite interesting outside of the standard stuff and they have done a nice job of threading a few good crimes together.
Of course it is still prime time filler that lacks imagination and you shouldn't expect too much. He stuff of corruption comes into it but it is all very black/white and simplistic, don't be expecting any of the complexities of The Shield or other cop imports in fact this really pales when you view it in comparison to the current crop of US imports in the UK. The one thing I really didn't like about the series was related to it being black/white it constantly plays the race card. From the opening scene where Nicky is pulled over and assaulted by the police for being black, the series keeps coming back to the 'you guys' stuff and, because it is not used well at all, it soon becomes tiring. Make a challenging drama about police racism if you wish but don't just throw it in because your character happens to be black. In some episodes it never raises its head but in other it is practically an obsession!
Gilet is more or less the reason the show was entertaining as he is effortlessly charismatic and manages to cover the fact that his character is too basic and very poorly developed. He is a coolly guy, easy to look at and he makes for appealing lead character. Kirwan is terrible. Her delivery is flat and lifeless and she seems to have just decided that, if the script isn't going to bother then neither will she. Dunn is OK but many UK viewers will find it hard to forget his much better role as Alistair Campbell in the Rory Bremner show! Rodska, Hodgson and Morfitt are all fairly poor just mugging along in resistant roles, and Harris gets old quickly with his dispensing of wisdom and subplots.
Overall this is a British bit of primetime fluff but one that can be enjoyed as such due to some OK plotting and a good lead role from Gilet, who never lest the inadequacies of his script and character get in the way of a charismatic performance. However an obsession with racism, clichés, poor dialogue and predictable/lazy subplots all drag it down to the level of 'passable' and, compared with the smart US cop shows currently showing in the UK, this series is a little bit of an embarrassment. But it is harmless viewing for a Tuesday night.