I had every intention of properly reviewing this five-part conspiracy thriller, part 1 of which aired last night. It stars the improbably-named Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement), as a mathematical genius who returns to London from Beijing for his brother's funeral, and Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) as a silent hit man.
It also involved mass surveillance, general Orwellian oppressiveness in a near-future Britain, and Max Beeseley getting blown apart by a car bomb in the Middle East -- video-streamed from the vantage point of a flying bird of prey. How could this possibly fail?
I turned it off after half an hour. Slow, stilted, awkward, and generally boring. I know some people enjoy a drama that takes its time to unfold (in contrast to the bang-bang-bang of US TV hits like 24, or films like the Bourne saga), but if each episode's going to be 85-minutes long it really needed to get a move on!
But The Last Enemy didn’t; it floundered and was painfully slow. I just couldn't face another hour of it, because nothing had provided a reason to keep watching after 30-minutes -- and that's plenty of time to make a judgement call, in my opinion...
In fact, I spent 10-minutes furrowing my brow at the fact a dead man's widow hadn't gone to her husband's funeral, purely because she was looking after a sick friend! Okay, her friend was very sick (she died and farted that very morning), but couldn't she get some home-help for the day? Or something!?
Maybe that puzzling question was answered later in episode 1, forming part of a clever plot -- I have no idea. It's wrong of me to write-off a programme I didn’t watch in its entirety (so feel free to defend Last Enemy below), but if something as juicy as a conspiracy thriller makes you turn it off after half an hour, that's assessment enough in some circles! I won't be watching the remaining 6 hours.
It's a shame, really, because I was quite looking forward to a home-grown thriller for Sunday nights. But The Last Enemy certainly didn't make a friend out of me.
17 February 2008
BBC1, 9.00 pm
It also involved mass surveillance, general Orwellian oppressiveness in a near-future Britain, and Max Beeseley getting blown apart by a car bomb in the Middle East -- video-streamed from the vantage point of a flying bird of prey. How could this possibly fail?
I turned it off after half an hour. Slow, stilted, awkward, and generally boring. I know some people enjoy a drama that takes its time to unfold (in contrast to the bang-bang-bang of US TV hits like 24, or films like the Bourne saga), but if each episode's going to be 85-minutes long it really needed to get a move on!
But The Last Enemy didn’t; it floundered and was painfully slow. I just couldn't face another hour of it, because nothing had provided a reason to keep watching after 30-minutes -- and that's plenty of time to make a judgement call, in my opinion...
In fact, I spent 10-minutes furrowing my brow at the fact a dead man's widow hadn't gone to her husband's funeral, purely because she was looking after a sick friend! Okay, her friend was very sick (she died and farted that very morning), but couldn't she get some home-help for the day? Or something!?
Maybe that puzzling question was answered later in episode 1, forming part of a clever plot -- I have no idea. It's wrong of me to write-off a programme I didn’t watch in its entirety (so feel free to defend Last Enemy below), but if something as juicy as a conspiracy thriller makes you turn it off after half an hour, that's assessment enough in some circles! I won't be watching the remaining 6 hours.
It's a shame, really, because I was quite looking forward to a home-grown thriller for Sunday nights. But The Last Enemy certainly didn't make a friend out of me.
17 February 2008
BBC1, 9.00 pm
