Hellfire

I was astonished by the arrogance of the post office high command. Even more astonished that its CEO was also an “executive” in the God Squad CoE plc. A bit more application of so-called Christian principles and a lot less corporate arrogance might have saved dozens, perhaps hundreds of lives from being ruined. But then, as a committed and devout atheist I have never had much time for the Holy Joes , the sanctimonious prigs who preach so much religious mumbo-jumbo while sinking to yet lower levels of humbug and hypocrisy. We have known about this scandal, rumbling on for years. The whole sordid business is explained in an excellent Wikipedia article. It appears that the Post Office used every means in its armoury to fight cases brought against it. Trying to appeal against court rulings or even have judges removed from proceedings. Almost the conduct of governments in “banana” republics. Shocking that it can happen here , with a so-called “Mother of Parliaments “ and where the accused are deemed innocent until proved guilty. This programme is truly excellent, the best bit of television drama for a long time. Certainly the best thing on television over this Christmas-New Year holiday, though the competition - endless very old films and repeats of very old comedy shows featuring long dead comedians has not been inspiring.

Well it certainly looks spectacular. Somehow I doubt if the MOD would really let a Beeb film crew aboard a Trident submarine to film away . So I guess a lot of what we see has been expensively created in a studio. All a bit too spacious and big to be a real sub, even one of this class. And I don’t think they have so many bods sat watching big screens in the real world. Nit picking aside, well it's thoroughly gripping.so far. Line of Duty/Unforgotten etc at their best. Am I bright enough to follow all the plot twists and turns, I’m not sure. Or are the slightly mumbled or incomprehensible Scots accents are there to mask the fact that there are leaks in the plot or subplots, more leaks hopefully than the sub itself. Of course contemporary drama has to represent contemporary fashion and the foibles of its creators, so the central characters have to be gay or black. They should have made our heroine gay black and in a wheelchair, thus demonstrating the MOD’s miserable failure to provide access for the disabled aboard its boats..

At first I thought this was going to be another of those incomprehensible over-complicated police dramas, complete with implausible plot twists. A whodunnit and why? But then the quirkiness of it all took over. The eccentric house, the unorthodox burial for Harry. Alice’s roller-coaster emotions, going from the furious and comical exchanges with insensitive bureaucrats to scenes of deep grieving. Nobody is completely likeable, not even Alice, who tends to use people, or her snooty parents, or rather ‘common’ in-laws. It appears Harry may have been far from saintly too. That is typical of humanity, no -one is perfect. But in the end there was some sort of resolution of all the differences. I enjoyed the performances of this star-studded cast (and new ones in the ascendency) and the fine production standards. I thought the final episode was rather weak and disappointing, Alice’s troubles haven’t gone away, if anything, they have got bigger. It appears this denouement is intentional, to presage a second series. Rather naughty of ITV, the programme ought to have continued to its conclusion without a break.