Rolling iPlayer and All 4 and iTVPlayer 2017-2018

10 minutes into Ronny Chieng: International Student and I have already laughed out loud many times. I guess it's an Australian import? so much of BBC comedy is sooooo bad though.

I haven't been brave enough to crack the drama ("& soaps"!!) category. So much stuff! tried the first 20 minutes of Gunpowder.. it was not for me. i know 1608 wasn't the most cheerful time to be alive in England but man.

gunpowder : so much religion, mud and blood in 3 hours of tv.

that said, i really enjoyed (if that's an appropriate word) it.

the almeida's hamlet with andrew scott: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09yj7dz/hamlet
review: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jun/25/hamlet-andrew-scott-harold-pinter-theatre-west-end-transfer-review-robert-icke

the funeral murders: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09wfrk0/the-funeral-murders?suggid=b09wfrk0
review: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2018/03/remarkable-bbc-film-remembering-ireland-s-unfathomably-bloody-funeral

i'm really sick of seeing this guy on TV. he's always EXACTLY the same while being cast in such disparate roles.

http://www.hertsad.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.4930142.1489442992!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg

the main guy in bodyguard is chronic

he was. i wanted to strangle him by about episode four. there were a lot of bad performances in this, actually. the woman who played the deputy sergeant was terrible. although nothing was as bad as the plotting in the last episode. jfc, what a stupid waste of time.

wake me up when they've been privatised, and their political staff have all been liquidated by aircraft machine guns. Because I'm sick of subsidising this fucking dross that I'm never going to watch!

but apparently interest in joining police counter-terrorism has gone up massively amongst people who clearly have a fucking clue

11 m viewers, this country deserves to die!

Bit and pieces of the series were ok but the finale was genuinely abysmal - from plotting to dialogue to performances. I love Line Of Duty but this ended up being completely inept.

Dire finale. I couldn't bear hearing another "make sure you keep applying pressure to the bomb thingy in your hand". Plot was a mess.

Nadia was revealed to be a bombmaking mastermind of huge value to the Jihad and we all know that the Jihad try to blow up their own bomb makers five episodes earlier. the best bit though was Dullard's escape after defusing the bomb omfg.

It was as good as it was laughable, with only a million cops and snipers and helicopters and police cars about. Well played.

This was hilarious, and I kind of admire the guts to go for a happy ending where everything turns out just so.

POLICE: Are you guilty?
SUSPECT: <gives full confession>

I love that slow motion grimace-to-smile transition that actors ALWAYS do in a ”surprise! villain gets unmasked” scene.

I actually enjoyed Jon Snow’s performance in this. Obviously the ending was very very stupid and enjoying the series as a whole depended on being complicit with, or temporarily repressing its rather vile racism. But I thought he was pretty compelling and strange.

He’d make a good Rogue Trooper.

Who will ever forget that classic scene:

Jon Snow: “Why did you kill the Home Secretary Julia Montague?”
Villain: “Eh, it was just business”
Jon Snow: “HHHHNNNnNNnnRRRrR”
Villain: “It was good for business”
Jon Snow: HHhHHHhnnnnnNnNnNNRrRrrrrRR!”

Line Of Duty was often ridiculous but excellent at letting the audience suspend disbelief, there was barely a line I. The last couple of episodes of this that didn’t make me think ‘why would you be saying that?’.

I am an engineer !

he wisnae jon snow, he was robb stark

i too thought he was really good in this tbh but jesus that final episode was dumb as a bag of hammers

my favourite part was when he disarmed the bomb vest, leapt over the wall and vanished into thin air, all while surrounded by tens if not hundreds of armed policemen

enjoying the series as a whole depended on being complicit with, or temporarily repressing its rather vile racism

yeah, the thing i liked most about the first couple of episodes was the suggestion that his experiences in afghanistan might have radicalised him and the will he/won't he on killing the home secretary himself - it was pretty disappointing when it became clear we were just gonna end up going in a much more tedious and conventional deep-state conspiracy story, and it all hinged on *shock horror* a woman being eeeevil

Bodyguard went completely under my radar. but apparently the numbers of people watching it 24 hours after broadcast were strangely huge.

Is anyone watching Press? Is it worth seeing that?

I watched the first episode of it but I completely forgot I'd even done that until you just mentioned it there. That's how compelling it was (and I stuck with Bodyguard all the way through, so it's not like I can't stomach implausible drama).

That doesn't sound too good. I saw, and was let down, by Bodyguard. I'm watching quite some Beeb stuff as of late. Killing Eve is enjoyable fodder. Wanderlust is, well, just fodder, yet I still watch it.

I've recorded all I've missed from Press so far. Your ringing endorsement has sealed the deal, I will watch it :)

anyone watching Black Earth Rising?

hugo blick is the UK damon lindelof

honourable woman was all-time tho

Came upon it by accident, ‘Reported Missing’ is uncomfortable but necessary viewing. Final episode on Monday was one of the rawest, most heartbreaking things I’ve seen on TV.

"They've Gotta Have Us" has been illuminating and enjoyable and well worth catching while it's still on iPlayer.

"there she goes" is pretty good, but quite stressful

there she goes is brilliant. the last scene in this week's episode was hilarious

Scream of Fear on talking pictures (freeview 81) tonight. Great little hammer film.

That's 20:00.

Haunting of Hill House on directly after too.

only just realised you only have to spend £4 on a basic aerial with usb booster to get freeview and it's a reliable signal, damn all those wasted years of paying for a basic virgin tv package at £20 a month. I hate myself.

at least the license fee buys you something :)

the 15 billion pound railway - this is my shit, put it directly into my veins

recommend the BBC2 documentary on qassem soleimani

BBC4 yorkshire ripper documentary series worth a watch

Been enjoying the uncomplicated fun of 'Gentleman Jack'. For two episodes I was sure the lead was played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag). Her resemblance to Suranne Jones is uncanny. So much so that I thought it rather vulgar that Jones, in her role as Anne Lister, also winks at and speaks to the camera ocassionally, breaking the 4th wall. Turns out it isn't Waller-Bridge at all.. Regardless, it's good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005mr0/episodes/player

"New Weird Britain
Music Journalist John Doran seeks out a new wave of radical music being made in the margins of Britain."

would've been nice on tv, i guess, but this was radio4. nothing new to listeners of Freak Zone or Late Junction but nice to see this stuff on radio 4 on a monday afternoon.

the one thing someone (Jennifer Walshe) said in episode 4 has stayed with me. "Online used to be an escape from the real world. But now the real world is the escape from online"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007737 (BBC2 21:00 27 July 2019)

"Hip hop legend and art lover Fab 5 Freddy saddles up to explore 15th-century Italian renaissance art in 15th-century style – on horseback."

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.Ysqw6ltYbd6FWLSXNOykcAHaFj%26pid%3DApi&f=1

The Fab 5 Freddy thing was both good fun and very interesting. More of this.

(he popped up on imagine (iirc*) as well, that same weekend) was an interesting, slightly different take at the art of the period.

(* there was something on about cindi sherman, might've been that. the other alternative was the thing about the new tate show by the Olafur Eliasson guy)

as mentioned elsewhere, the george clark thing on council houses was v watchable.

and the deller thing about rave culture / riots

There's a documentary about Bruce Chatwin made by Werner Herzog on iPlayer. Nomad, it's called.

yeah i was gonna watch this on broadcast last night but decided to go to sleep cos iplayer exists, looks good tho

howtf is 4od still not HD ? it's 2019

mate they're still using flash.

The original series of The Demon Headmaster is on iPlayer just now if you fancy a wander down memory lane before the reboot airs

anyone else watching giri/haji? really liked the 3 episodes so far though the ending of episode 3 strains credibility beyond breaking point. the lead actor/character is dull but the supporting ones are great. love the pre-episode recaps as well.

Giri/Haji should be total catnip to me - stylish Japanese/London police gangster drama with lots of dry humour. But yeah the lead guy is lacking spark or something.

Gold Digger is good for four episodes then another one of those annoying/frustrating wastes of time that move the goalposts off the playing field.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bh0n

Greg Davis looks back at Kes.

warning: contains Greg Davies

8(

There's a new show started on CH4 tonight called My Grandparent's War where actors talk about their ancestors' war experiences, obv. The four actors chosen are: Helena Bonham-Carter, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Mark Rylance and Carey Mulligan. Does anyone else see a problem here? In related news, Christopher Eccleston's episode of Who Do You Think You Are was, allegedly, dropped because the researchers thought his working-class background was not interesting enough.

This country is actually making me feel ill.

Yeah I was rolling my eyes at the trailer for that one

Surprised at Rylance for playing along with this horseshit tbh

Rylance is a Shakespeare-didn't-write-Shakespeare nutter, would fall for any old horseshit

biker gang in worzel gummidge was top drawer

Yeah the first episode was competent and good in places but the second knocked it out of the park. I'm still chuckling at "leather milk balloon".

he didn't know and didn't watch the Pertwee version before he'd finished shooting and it has a very different feel.

unthanks on music duties too, which came out of him asking to use magpie song on detectorists

Sounds:

<3 these Stand Up For The Classics that have all just been made into podcasts (meaning they won't expire for over a year)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077x8pc/episodes/guide

🚨 🚨 "NEW PRINT" OF ANDREI RUBLEV ON FILM 4 TONIGHT 🚨 🚨

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gwzd/how-to-make-series-1-1-the-trainer

this was great, felt like old-school science tv, somehow, like Tomorrow's World. she knows her stuff and is enthusiastic. nice to see behind the scenes at UAL in Granary Square too (given that there probably won't be a degree show this year)

The adaptation of Sally Rooney's Normal People is incredibly intense and moving. I don't think I've seen anything this deeply felt from the BBC for a long time.It's actually unlike anything I've seen on TV - I have to keep pausing because I'm feeling quite emotionally overwhelmed although I'm feeling that a lot anyway rn. It's a BBC3 co-production with hulu but fate has found it on BBC1 - I assume this was a last-minute programming decision because other series' have not been completed due to we know what. It's probably the least BBC1 thing imaginable but is available in full on the iPlayer. I'm on episode three and haven't read the book so please, no spoilers.

I think the lead time is such that there's enough TV for now, especially drama stuff, but the problem is that nothing is being filmed and that'll lead to problems later. Outside of drama, a friend went to the filming of Christmas QI in October, suggesting the lead time there is a couple of months. But Robin Ince has said that he had to sit on his Celeb Pointless win for over a year before it was broadcast.

The bbc3 on bbc1 slot has been a thing lately. This Country recently. There is plenty more that didn't get a traditional airing, not all of it good.

There's been lots of decent Art on TV recently too. Bbc4 have been going around museums that are on lockdown giving you a peep at, say, the Warhol at the Tate modern that nobody will get to see.

The Basquiat documentary had a repeat last week. There was another about the us art market that had some nice things in it even if the focus was all wrong.

Highlight for me, though, was Grayson Perry just pottering(!) around at home with Philippa, talking to the odd celeb artist on zoom (lycett, lemon), just generally chilling.

Started Giri/Haji. Took an episode to realise that the rent boy is the one who wrote Flowers.

Apparently Normal People is the most watched programme on iplayer ever at this point. I must say that by the time I finished it I didn't like it any more for reasons I don't realy care to go into atm. Not personal reasons really, I'm glad that it has had the impact that it has because it's so unique and its success is so unexpected.

wait, it's the most requested (whatever that means) BBC3 thing not the most-watched thing on the platform.

i think that honour still belongs to rupaul’s drag race

:)

I probably liked both equally.

This is great. BBC iPlayer has announced plans to bring 23 classic RKO films to the service on 18 May.

Anyone catch Brookers 'Antiviral Wipe' last night? I was most pleased he hadn't forgotten about BoJo's 350m Magic Bus

i enjoyed DEVS, (8 x 45m) which is still on iplayer.

i'm refusing to go back to the office until they make us a mag-lev Menger sponge to work in (the vacuum aspect is probably too fiddly though - no toilets?)

also finished Giri / Haji mentioned above and that was great, all sorts of everything in there, including comtemporary dance.

those two and Normal People make it feel like a purple patch for tv at the mo.

A thread for Devs, the new Alex Garland show on FX/HBO (with SPOILERS) in case you have thoughts

The Windrush Scandal drama on BBC1 tonight was very good. It's called Sitting in Limbo.

I finally went in on I May Destroy You and holy fuck. Best show I've seen in a long time.

That show is very confused, imo but there are enough great things in it to keep me watching. I may expand once I've seen this week's episodes.

fwiw, I think the great things are very admirable and the things that I consider to be bad are very confusing, personally. Morally, it seems incredibly weird, at times, but I'm willing to accept that that's part of a greater pattern that is yet to be revealed.

BBC4 seems to be having a black history month all of its own. Which means I get to see The Long Song which I missed at the time.

Also enjoyed the Keith Haring thing on bbc2 recently.

jed I'd be v interested to hear about the things you think are bad. I'll admit there's a lot of the milieu that I'm just kind of taking on faith.

just got aound to watching 'trigonometry' which i'm really enjoying. unless the charcters take a sudden heel turn over the last couple of episodes it's just been nice watching a series where most of the characters are really nice.

Searching For Shergar is back on for a month, FYI

Drowning By Numbers is available on the Channel 4 app at the moment.

oh sweet thanks

Cheers!

The Mole is fantastic

2-part doc on a Danish amateur spy, incredibly well shot and a really unusual vibe to it.

Will check it out!

same

Made the mistake of watching both parts when I was tired, so started falling asleep at the very end unfortunately (think I caught all the main points), but that's because it was so gripping I wanted to watch part 2 straight after p1. So many questions! That James guy just bowling up and no-one really asking anything!

bbc four is showing scandi-drama The Bridge (series 3) two episodes at a time on saturday nights which is a good excuse the rewatch them all - it's probably my favourite of the lot (just above the wallanders)

(not to be confused with The Bridge on ch4 on sunday nights)

I just watched all 3 seasons! I missed it the first time round. When I was falling asleep watching The Mole I think I was getting slightly confused having watched more Danes in the Bridge the night before.
S3 is ridiculous, nonsensical and dumb compared to the prev 2 series but it's a wild ride and if they show s4 I'll be watching that too.

(i'm about to start series 2 - the pvr didn't pick up the first two episodes because the second series had a different series id to series 1 and i didn't notice they weren't going to record until they didn't)

The Mole is fantastic

It was... quite good? not super gripping. "The Mole now had a plan. To follow Alejandro and see where it lead... On his return to Spain Alejandro was arrested" was an (unintentional?) lol. The villagers who'd been told they were getting a hospital running out and cheering was pretty depressing.

that bit and lots of other bits just made me feel sick. like, i now assume this sort of casual horror is just happening all the time, far away

yes absolutely.

I watched all of 4-part political thriller "Roadkill" but didn't find it very thrilling, despite an interesting start.

I loved the first two episodes! Does it just not follow through? I suppose I'll watch part three this weekend.

idk, by the end it felt like each character had said a lot of things but not done a lot... but then it's not like nothing dramatic happened so it's probably just me watching late at night when I need to go to sleep!

tbf, that is my viewing method for that show as well...

iPlayer now features all of Sorry I've Got No Head. You're welcome.

Just finished Bridge III during the week, will wait for series 4 to finish before starting it.

This weekend has been DNA which did a great thing in that there were two threads going through it but the two threads were 4 years apart which you only found out in episode 5 when she phoned the police.

Next up, something from Walter Presents and then the Valhalla thing that's currently on bbc4 Saturdays.

Also, witch, witch, witch!

Ha, just started Bridge s4, then will start DNA. Anyone watched Industry? I've not seen anything about it except the iPlayer blurb.

only seen the first two. the characters are predictably loathsome, but also really boring, except maybe harper. don't think i'll bother with the rest.

god help me i watched all 6 episodes of french series 'fear at the lake' on all4 mainly in disbelief at the combination of unbelievable coincidences and unfathomable decision making throughout. truly incredible stuff.

(the art dealer bloke from bridge iii is also in dna - nicholas bro. there are only 5 actors in denmark)

...and at least two of them will be in The Investigation, a dramatisation of that case about a murder on a homemade submarine

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/the-investigation

(foreigners probably think the same thing about David Tennant and idris elba and Olivia Colman)

That latest news is from 2019 and it's nearly 2021

the aforementioned 'something from walter presents' is The Same Sky, 6 hours of german thing treading pretty much the same path as Deutschland 8x, but in the 70s. it took two episodes for me to realise that the woman being honey-trapped was Saga from The Bridge.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5424556/mediaviewer/rm585891840/

Made it through 2 eps of Industry. Not sure if I'll stick with it but my mind is still reeling re Miles from Lost being a senior boss guy

I liked it although I mostly couldn't understand what people were talking about. I can watch pretty much anything with good looking men in it though.

guadagnino thing is pish

christ almighty the Lovers Rock “episode” of Small Axe is just monumentally great

the bike ride in the morning was one of the most beautiful shots i can remember seeing in a movie

so many incredible things about this

Bike ride was slightly odd on that it was shot upwards, which looked great, as you say, but just had me wondering if they couldn't find a road that didn't look too modern

Just switched on to watch the end of mastermind and then Only Connect. Instead got the end of Some Mothers Do Ave Em and then Butterflies, with the current BBC 2 ident and a trailer for the Marcus Rashford programme inbetween. Stopped and started and it went back to normal. Wtf?

when watching the 'live' stream on iplayer?

the default 2 hour buffer might explain this - you were seeing the start of the buffer and not the live edge.

(this is exactly my job, the live streams. have spent the last year re-writing it to work better (not yet deployed). ask me about converting transport streams to mp4 (don't))

ding ding! just looked, they were indeed on two hours before. disappointed it wasn't a 40 odd year time slip as i first thought.

Seasons 1-7 of Engrenages aka Spiral - the best French police procedural - are up on iPlayer.

that's Christmas sorted

Next and last season starts in Jan.

French colleague tells me he finds it nearly unwatchable in the original, says the acting is terrible.

lol i kind of agree tbh

vastly prefer le bureau

No way! Only good thing about Le Bureau is that their codenames are borrowed from Captain Haddock.

Spiral is ridiculous ofc but it makes more sense than idk Line of Duty

Spiral starts tonight at 9

I'm halfway through 'The Serpent' on iPlayer. It's kind of interesting but not sure it needs 8 episodes...

Definitely didn't need to be as long and there were several times when the time shifting worked against it - it lost all the momentum when we're trying to follow Nadine's story more than once - and towards the end a couple of times scenes from earlier are restaged to show another angle. One of these *really* doesn't work imo.

Yeah the back-and-forth was thoroughly confusing, particularly at the start.

There's one point in I think ep 6 that it just ruins the whole sequence there's a lovely tension build then suddenly everyone's walking around like nothing's happened then we drop back into the tension.

>> (the art dealer bloke from bridge iii is also in dna - nicholas bro. there are only 5 actors in denmark)
>> ― koogs, Sunday, November 29, 2020

> ...and at least two of them will be in The Investigation, a dramatisation of that case about a murder on a homemade submarine
> ― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, November 29

which starts on 22nd january, trailer just been on bbc2 (just after a bbc kids education trail)

(also, wallander's in it, the one from early 2000s, not the one from later 2000s)

Anybody watched It's A Sin?

Everyone and his dog seems to be raving about it on social media but wondering if it's actually any good.

some talk on the doctor who thread (given that it's written by rtd)

Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

I'm halfway through 'The Serpent' on iPlayer. It's kind of interesting but not sure it needs 8 episodes...

― kinder

Yeah it was an enticingly stylish and atmospheric series but overlong, repetitive and kind of shallow. If you read Charles Sobraj's wiki there's a ton of crazy stuff he did which they didn't even touch on, which feels like a squandered opportunity.

I've watched the first ep of It's A Sin. Nothing too surprising yet but it's made me chuckle.

Did any discussion of It’s A Sin make it out of the Who thread? Curious what people made of it. I thought it was a masterpiece up until the last episode, when an out-of-nowhere Keeley Hawes scene de acting boots it into embarrassing amdram

it's on the list

I mostly thought it was brilliant, apart from the BAFTA-bait scene referred to above, which seemed completely out of synch with the rest of it (and an unwelcome return to the RTD Point Hammering Home excesses so maligned over on the Who thread which were, for the most part, reined in throughout). The denouement of the Stephen Fry subplot was a bit shit in that respect as well.

some chat about it here: Queer as Folk US v Queer as Folk UK FITE

I'm watching the Man in Room 201 on iPlayer and it's terrible, don't do it

301!

i watched it.
biased cos i loved watching finland etc.
oh, and there is a LOT more swearing than the subs reveal.

couple of days late but just watched the final episode of the current run of Unforgotten and holy fuck they gonna end it like that!!!!!

Series recommended?

that's next on my list to watch from the start

xp
yeah i really liked it. but it is v much a police procedural in that every series is based around a body being discovered many years after it was hidden and the same team of officers trying to identify the victim and find out what happened. usually 4 or 5 suspects who we follow in the present day as they go about their lives. so the premise is nothing new but i love how understated it all is, how professional the police are in it (well it is fiction) and the performances of the whole squad.

thanks for the explainer, I kinda hate police procedurals but my partner loves them so maybe i can give it a go after me knock out giri/haji (another police procedural of sorts, lol)

each series is only 4-6 episodes long and about 45mins per episode so not too much of a commitment at least!

That helps! Okay, will try s1 with the missus.

watched The Investigation yesterday, all 4.5 hours of it. wasn't the plan but i got 4/6ths of the way through and wanted to know how it ended. they never show the killer or mention him by name.

(still surprised there's no dedicated scandi tv thread)

Man in Room 301 was ok. suffered from being Finnish but set mostly in Greece.

Also watched The Guilty which was a Danish film set entirely in a police call centre. like the world's biggest bottle episode. lots of reading for that one because it was dialogue heavy.

itv three-parter Too Close is phenomenal so far. The acting is amazing. I can't stop thinking about it.

The Investiation, the danish thing about the submarine killer, was good. lot of familiar faces as mentioned above (although i hadn't twigged at the time that one of them was swedish)

Investi*g*ation

Too Close is leaning very hard on 'middle class markers' and I'm finding it frustratingly formulaic (sorry) - story being told in little memory breadcrumbs, etc. I'll watch Emily Watson in anything, though!

I apologise, I should let someone actually enjoy something sometimes without butting in with my criticism :) I'm enjoying it enough to finish it!

I'll let you away with it this time.

Will try it based on these mixed recommendations (tho really because of Watson tbh)

Midway through the second ep and, yes, Too Close is a little too middle class tropey but the performances of the central two are really good and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

There was a 'Real Bent Coppers' documentary on BBC2 (first of 3 parts) which was quite interesting, a fair bit of actual recorded and archive footage from the late 60s.

Enjoying in a low-key sort of way French low-budget SF Missions: two billionaires race to Mars but something is there waiting for them...

(on iplayer)

Didn't know about that, thanks!

(the second series felt a bit wooly to me)

Uprising was a hard watch at times (3 x 1hr from steve mcqueen on bbc1 recently) but necessary watching, i think.

Under The Wire, on over the weekend, about reporters in Syria was similar. echoes with current afghanistan as well.

That was just recommended to me too. worth starting at the start?

(Missions, that is)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUEcS6B1OQ

That was just recommended to me too. worth starting at the start?

It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

(the second series felt a bit wooly to me) (Missions, that is)

I'd have gone for 'bonkers' but yeah it's not hard sf. Given that the revelation in the first series was in blatant contradiction of everything we know about genetics and the fossil record, it was probably to be expected. Some cracking moments though, and some very silly ones. Especially why they didn't just shoot Alice again when she was tied up on the ground.

Just started it and was enjoying the Lost-ness of it (up to a point) and was joking about the lottery numbers just before they did! That one guy keeps reminding me of Will Self.

Is this thread the only mention of Unforgotten on this board? Hadn't heard much about it but I quite liked it for a police procedural. I wouldn't say there's a lot to distinguish it, but the pacing and execution was on-point

I watched all of them not that long ago. There's something quite soothing about the neatly parcelled-out clues coming to light and guessing who dun what. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
I'd say it's more character-driven than your average procedural.

Yeah, we hadn't watched it at the time, but rattled through them all on Netflix and ITV player a few weeks ago. Very likeable.

That's a good point, kinder, about it being more character-driven than similar shows. It's funny because in S1 the few moments where they focus on Cass's personal life felt distracting to the main story, but by S4, I was as invested in her personal life as I was the case!

I've watched 2 episodes of Hollington Drive and it's so awful, it's mildly reminiscent of The Room (the Tommy Wiseau one)

Showtrial is very well put together, particularly if you're into the process side of things. More straightforward but better written than Vigil.
After the execrable Hollington Drive and duuuullll as ditchwater The Long Call it was v welcome.
(I've been burnt twice by trying ITV drama - is the Tower any good, anyone?)

New thread for '22 here

iPlayer 2022 (and All4 etc etc)

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that all the shows that run on iTV in 2021 are nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!