Undescribable Perfection

Don't listen to the negative reviews

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

When DI Helen Weeks discovers she's pregnant, she and partner Paul return to her hometown to give the news to her father. A place she hates, Helen has to stay to help out school friend Linda, who's partner has been arrested for the abduction of two young girls. The case leads Helen to open a case which is close to home.A miniseries, but more two two parters, the first sees Helen help Linda look for the abductor of two girls, the second sees her open a case of abuse against her in her youth.I would agree with those that say they felt a little cheated with the solution, but does every drama need to be black and white? MyAnna Buring has done some great TV, including Banished and Ripper Street, once again she is outstanding, she leads the drama with real command, adding raw emotion into her character. She is superb, particularly well supported by Ben Batt and Matt King.The only annoyance has to be her pregnancy suit, did they mix it up with one for a Killer Whale?This show has the makings of a really good series, with such strong viewing figures I hope the potential is realised, and the show returns, excellent drama. 9/10

I'm not familiar with the source book by Mark Billingham and so was initially confused by the format of this four-part crime drama consisting of two loosely connected stories run together one after the other.The first story was a traditional whodunnit in a familiar set-up where two young girls go missing, one turns up dead and there's a race to save the other one. Returning to her detested home town is pregnant police detective Helen Weeks played by Myanna Buring, ostensibly to comfort her childhood friend, whose husband is the prime suspect, but of course she can't resist some investigating of her own. Not only that, it turns out that her main reason for hating her upbringing was a childhood trauma she shared with her friend, which means some clichéd encounters with her phantom childhood self as she battles her demons, not to mention wider local prejudice, to crack the case. We've all seen these kind of stories spread out over 6-8 episodes so I suppose I should be grateful for the concision here but somehow it did feel a touch rushed although I'll confess I didn't guess the perpetrator.Did I mention that our girl was conflicted in her love life? Despite having an apparently happy relationship with "good bloke" fellow cop Paul, she has a fling with another cop, a Jamie Dornan lookalike, to the extent that she doesn't know who the father of her child is. This plays onto the third and fourth episodes where, now heavily pregnant, her life is turned upside down by an apparently tragic accident involving one of the men in her life which goes onto involve gang warfare in inner Manchester, with a mounting body-count which doesn't stop until the last scene. This story was much darker, more urban, more interesting I thought and contrasted with the more traditional story at the heart of episodes 1 and 2.I suppose the two differing stories show how different one case can be from the next but didn't exactly make for convincing continuity. Buring's lone-wolf activities, especially in the second half, take some swallowing as she puts herself and her almost-due child at great personal risk as she tangles with teenage gangs and criminal overlords in pursuit of the truth.Buring was okay in a sub-Anna Friel-type part but Ben Batt (a lookalike for pop singer Chris Martin) was better in the thankless task of the cuckolded boyfriend. There were some odd background characters you suspect there for PC reasons like Buring's gay dad and his boyfriend and her very camp forensics chum who isn't above following men into toilets. I did like the acting of the young black actor who played the new teenage father drawn into gangdom to provide for his girlfriend and child.For me though, on the whole, there were too many situations, too many characters and too many coincidences, plus I never really cared for Buring's character much from the start. But the detective parts were fine as was the depiction of inner city life and strife in Manchester making it a slightly above average crime drama of its type.

This review concentrates on the first two episodes but the lack of quality can easily be directed to the second two episodes Dreadful Acting, implausible plot line and a lack of continuity that was, quite frankly, breathtaking.The flashbacks, the way people spoke to each other - a detective to her boss - blimey.As for the cars - different number plates from one scene to the next - people travelling in the back of the car had a window behind them when the camera was in the car (like an estate car) and yet there was no window on the outside as they got out of the car. Abandoning cars in the middle of the village and a supposedly heavily pregnant police officer, getting and involved with a case outside of her force, barking orders and getting into fightsComplete and utter rubbish

'In the Dark' is a strange kind of television series: well-acted (MyAnna Buring stands out in the lead role), and with interesting themes, but marred by a broadly implausible premise (female detective brings criminals to justice while nine-and-a-half month's pregnant) and sudden plot leaps. Danny Brockelhurst is an experienced writer, and to be fair, here he is adapting books and not writing from a clean slate, but the script is definitely uneven, and the result falls between fast and taut, and something lengthier and deeper which might have told a more coherent tale.