Bella Tinker

The first series is watchable. Crowd pleaser Brendan Gleeson takes the lead as Bill Hodges and subsequently reprises his role as a jaded, cynical cop, but this time, he's recently retired. When Hodges receives video nasties that taunt him for his inability to catch mass murderer "Mr Mercedes", his ex-colleagues brush it all off and refuse to take it seriously, forcing him to enlist the help of a couple of computer savvy young 'uns, + start his own investigation. So far so trope-y. It plods along, with various middle aged + senior women throwing themselves at Bill's body. The grumpy old but loveable Irishman is played to the full: rudeness is excused again and again and became tedious. Maybe he was supposed to be Dr House's Irish cousin, sharp of wit and tongue, but it didn't work for me. What really didn't work was the electronic/computer store. A massive salesroom that rarely saw customers, and a manager whose idea of team building was to corner his two "weirdo" salespeople and lambast them on an almost hourly basis for being weird. I stopped watching Series 2 when the main character was arrested on the verbal testament of a self-confessed murderer. Even though no other witnesses, Bill admitted to trying to murder the murderer. Whereupon they were placed in adjoining cells, and Bill (ex-cop remember) attempted to murder the murderer again. Phew. At that point, I was positively dizzy from suspending disbelief and gave up.

Sleek high class production with some outstanding acting let down by a ridiculous infantile story line.