Amanda Woodham

Suspend, if you are able, dear reader, belief - or even disbelief - in the tradition of courtly love or of any form of historical authenticity; and imagine, if you will, a gilded world where town and country merge effortlessly, the guests take to the dance floor to the tune of Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’, and but one modiste dresses a hundred aristocratic families (and Claire’s Accessories has had a run on false eyelashes) … and then revel in Bridgerton, all over again. You’ve got to love this second series, which is even more lavish than the first. Frankly it’s more believable than EastEnders and infinitely more entertaining. Four stars for sheer effrontery.

Hang on, did I hear this right? A senior police officer, giving the tip to a pair of murderers, tells them how to get in round the back of the local station because “there’s no CCTV there”. It’s a *police* station and there’s no camera out the back (because by implication no-one ever the uses the back door, so don’t worry, guys, it’s safe)? Good grief. Well, it was only a minor transgression in the the broader scheme of things, in this farce of a ‘thriller’. James Nesbitt is the same in all his roles, a grizzled detective with a dubious past and a face like a slapped arse. Cush Jumbo isn’t a good enough actress to convince the viewer of the veracity of her character and her backstory; neither is she, frankly, alluring enough to make anyone believe that the photographer - hasn’t he had a life in the intervening 17 years? - has never got over losing her. Her fancy house suggests she and hubby-to-be are high-achieving professionals but we don’t see either of them at work and we have no idea at all of what he’s supposed to do for a living. And half the time they don’t seem to know what their kids are up to. I’m giving it 2 stars because I like Jo Joyner, although in this production she was pointlessly cast and much underused.

Started out well but slid downhill after about an hour. It was so inauthentic that even I as a film-watcher with a high threshold for suspending disbelief couldn’t stomach it any more. Miscasting was the principal reason. The character of the younger sister was meant to be aged five when the original crime was committed; clearly the young actress who played Katie was at least eight or nine, and that’s a huge age difference in childhood. Sandra Bullock was supposed to have spent 20 years inside but she hadn’t aged at all in the interim - she looked exactly the same as when she was cast as the younger Ruth. I sort of concluded that this was a vanity project for Bullock as an actress who is not far off 60 can’t seriously convince when playing the part of a woman whose age range is meant to be from late teens/early 20s to late 30s/early 40s. Similarly the old boy who was cast as the sheriff looked close to retirement age, so one might reasonably believe he was supposed to be the grandfather rather than the father of the two young men who were out to plot revenge. Two stars from me, I’m afraid.