...mostly because it had promise.
Pluses:
--the actors: most of them are well-known and their performance history is pretty good, overall.
That's pretty much it for the pluses.
The minuses:
--the scripts: formulaic, a patchwork of elements from other (better) series, laden with cliches; most of the episodes telegraph the solution well before the conclusions.
--the characters: no matter how good the actors, there's only so much they can do with two-dimensional characters, for example, Hale, the "angry" cop... Oggy, the quirky oddball...
the direction: elementary, amateurish; again, there may be only so much a director can do with weak scripts, but they should be able to give the actors some guidance. Directing doesn't show here. It looks more as if the actors were left to their own devices.
--the setting: the idea of a body farm is not in itself a problem. I don't know if there is such a place in the UK, but I know of at least one in the US. The problem with this particular setting is it's dirty. The "house" has paint peeling from the walls, clutter everywhere, from dirty dishes to wadded clothing to open shelving with who-knows-what. The "mortuary" is separated from the live-in area by a plastic curtain. Hardly ideal for a forensics lab.
Even worse, technical aspects of investigation and analysis are sorely lacking. A character says "Suit up" as the team prepares to enter a crime scene, only to show them dressed in paper booties and plastic gloves, and nothing else. Hairnets? Masks? Full-cover suits? Nah, why bother. If cross-contamination doesn't happen at the scene itself, it surely will back in the lab, where they lean over bodies, dropping hair, skin cells, their own DNA, whatever.
A real shame that the production team wasted the budget and some decent actors on this piece of drivel. As I said, I gave it four stars because it had potential. Sadly, that potential dwindled as of the first episode, and was never recovered.
