Waking the Dead (TV Series) Deathwatch: Part 1 (2002) User Reviews

Do not adjust your sets.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 29 December 2019]

A death bed confession leads Boyd and co into a world of unauthorised killings and gangsters.

Terrific quality once again, these early episodes in particular had a superb narrative, great balance of drama and story, we even had a sweet moment, although that joyful scene was short lived, followed by one of the sadder scenes from the show.

A great cast including David Hemmings and David De Keyser, good to see William Armstrong, I always wondered where Trevor went, when he vanished from Silent Witness.

They're starting to get murky with the colours, the visuals are as dark as the story. Excellent all round. 9/10

We shouldn't go back to favourite programmes from the past

[Janet1612 · 3/10 · 23 January 2023]

I loved Walking The Dead, or my memory did. I'm re-watching the series and so far not so good.

They are all excellent actors and the plots are OK - this one just annoyed me. First of all the silly, 'spooky' music with odd noises that seems to run through all the episodes - often drowning out the dialogue.

I was annoyed too that our BBC licence money was being spent on mocking up a pub to have the same name 'The Poor Struggler', as a tenuous link to the pub ran by the UK's last hangman (Albert Pierrepoint). I'd recently watched a documentary on him, and recognised the pub name immediately. There is NO pub in London with that name, the original 'struggler' was in Manchester and is no more. No wonder the show was cancelled if they wasted our licence money like that.

Also the attempts to recreate the 1960s in black and white just didn't ring true and was poorly done.

Great seeing old London prior to development - and the O2 centre looking a space ship across the water. Also the wonderful houses in Islington when Boyd and Spens visited the widower. Now much smarter.