Guy Davenport

I’ve only watched the first episode of Hinterland and that was one too many. There are many dark and brooding detective series out there on various platforms that are successful and eminently watchable but this is not one of them. The plot of the first episode is so flimsy, stereotypical and predictable that it was easy to guess who the murderer was within 20 minutes. Sure, there are loads of cinematic, washed out vistas of Wales that portray it as a forgotten and bleak landscape, backed up by an unsettling and desolate music score but this is no substitute for the woefully simplistic and obvious plot that has been covered so many times. before. I felt no affinity or connection to any of the characters and quite frankly, I didn’t care who the murderer was after 20 minutes. This series is clearly written for those that like their crime dramas to be about joining the dots, like a 5 piece jigsaw puzzle. The plot clunks and plods along that you feel even a toddler would be able to follow it. Wait. Who’s this? It’s the brooding, solemn faced detective who clearly has some kind of past. This is intimated by his constantly dour demeanour and long stares into the distance. Something is troubling him. He’s reliving something in the past that haunts him? Oh yes, and it’s conveyed with as much subtlety as brick in the face. It’s a shame I’ll never know what’s troubling him as I won’t be coming back for more of this shameful tripe. It’s baffling that this series has so many good reviews. It feels like a series from the 80s but this genre has moved on a lot since then. It’s possible to create a dark, unsettling crime drama that is tense and thrilling, purely based on the development of characters and an edgy, well written script, rather than padding one out with a collection of views of a bleak, rocky outcrop accompanied by an off key piano and a lead character as one dimensional and boring as the script itself. I’m told that episode 1 is one of the best. I think we’ll leave it there.

The plot has more holes than a sieve. Utterly awful.