This review is only of the first episode, and if the show improves I will change my rating accordingly! I would have expected better from the creators of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. The dialogue was incredibly cheesy and clichéd, the characters flat, the acting hammy and the whole show was so ridiculously PC (especially coming after a show which features such an un-PC character as Gene Hunt). There were times at which I thought I was watching a comedy or spoof. Reading over viewers' opinions on the BBC message boards it seems that hardly anybody liked it - and those that did were more in the "so bad it's good" camp.
Spoilers follow One of the scenes I found funniest was one in which two people have just been burnt to death under a dovecote in somebody's back garden - after a ridiculous swinging rope fight and the defeat of the bad guy by *singing* (if you haven't seen it, just don't ask). There are also a load of Roman crosses down there - including Jesus' cross - and yes, the fire is still blazing. These people are supposed to be professional archaeologists. There's a chance they may have found one of the most important artefacts known to man. So what do they do? They decide to go to the pub.
Will probably give it another chance in case it's just a case of a duff pilot (having said all that it was fairly watchable, in the sense of it being train-wreck TV), but am not really prepared to take it much further than that if it continues at this standard. It also has a lot of potential the idea behind the show is interesting, and as I am a fan of Indiana Jones the genre does appeal to me. But with golden lines such as "identify yourself, creepy caller" and "two men with medieval swords just broke into your flat" (seriously), I think it needs to rapidly improve to keep me viewing!
Spoilers follow One of the scenes I found funniest was one in which two people have just been burnt to death under a dovecote in somebody's back garden - after a ridiculous swinging rope fight and the defeat of the bad guy by *singing* (if you haven't seen it, just don't ask). There are also a load of Roman crosses down there - including Jesus' cross - and yes, the fire is still blazing. These people are supposed to be professional archaeologists. There's a chance they may have found one of the most important artefacts known to man. So what do they do? They decide to go to the pub.
Will probably give it another chance in case it's just a case of a duff pilot (having said all that it was fairly watchable, in the sense of it being train-wreck TV), but am not really prepared to take it much further than that if it continues at this standard. It also has a lot of potential the idea behind the show is interesting, and as I am a fan of Indiana Jones the genre does appeal to me. But with golden lines such as "identify yourself, creepy caller" and "two men with medieval swords just broke into your flat" (seriously), I think it needs to rapidly improve to keep me viewing!