Sorry, this movie sucks

Powerful

How sad is this?

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

I had high hopes when I saw the cast. But eventually it was tiring to watch. At first it was heart-warming to see people gather to do something good and that they stay united. Nevertheless, I do not like stupidity and pathology. Therefore I understood the feelings of betrayal and hostility towards the "mom" character. She fully presented a dumb woman, destroyed by her life choices (her family was mentioned as a non-pathological), leaving no doubt what sort of human-being she really is. I was sorry for the children, I felt claustrophobic by the number of people coming and going through the neighbours' houses and I felt depressed after watching the series. I don't understand how it can be hinted that if a person had bad life ( because she has no moral compass and likes to give birth to children aparently) she can be rid of responsibility... Stupidity is not an excuse.

This drama is about the kidnapping and false imprisonment of Shannon Matthews in West Yorkshire in 2008. This bizarrely has Shannon's mother Karen's friend as the protagonist. It centres on the search to find Shannon, rather than on the crime. There's nowhere near enough about Karen (who isn't shown saying or doing much), or her partner's uncle (who kidnapped and held Shannon). There's no depiction of the kidnapping or the planning of it - and Shannon isn't shown at all. That means that the viewer doesn't know much about what happened, or how heavily involved Karen was.

The Moorside tells the story of the staged abduction of Shannon Matthews from the viewpoint of Julie Bushby, the person who led the community effort to find the 9 year old Dewsbury schoolgirl. As she tells the press: 'When chips are down and one of us has a problem, we are all there to help, we stand shoulder to shoulder with one another, we will never give up hope'The rallying cry felt hollow in this docudrama as we knew Shannon's mother was involved in this bizarre abduction. Even when Shannon went missing, there was an outcry that people living in council estates did not merit the sensitive media attention that the parents of Madeline McCann had got a year earlier.The first episode focuses on Karen Matthews and her dysfunctional family. She had children from several men, her present partner seems to be more interested in surfing the internet. Some of the other relatives crave the media attention. Karen herself comes across as dimwitted and maybe even manipulative as well. Suspicions are aroused early when she starts dancing to a ringtone of a mobile phone.By the end of the first episode, Shannon is found under the bed of Karen's boyfriend's uncle. A cack-handed stunt to get money from the media it seems.In the second episode the police now turn their attention towards Karen. Her friends and neighbours who rallied for her now have doubts about her story. The community now vilify Karen Matthews but Julie Bushby saw her as weak, a symptom of a broken Britain where too many women from an early age were let down by men. In the drama Julie and one of Karen's neighbour talk about how both were sexually abused as youngsters.The drama was strongly acted by the leads, Gemma Whelan, Sian Brooke and Sheridan Smith but I felt it still lacked freshness, too much about it that delved on 'council house scum.' I can imagine that wounds are still raw in parts of Dewsbury and although we do not see the character of Shannon, I could not help thinking that this drama did not do her much good given she is now 18 years old.

I've only seen the first episode but I can be confident that my rating isn't going to change and neither will my opinion of this program.Firstly, don't watch it if you think you're going to find out anything you didn't already know from TV and newspaper reports. Don't watch it if you want to see sweeping camera shots of Dewsbury and the surrounding countryside. It wasn't filmed there.You'll watch this because it was written by Neil Mckay who has written some great TV in the past. He's written TV shows about the Moors Murderers and Fred & Rose West. You have to remember that when shows like this are written there will be some added drama that didn't actually happen so as to sex up the show.The problem with this show is that it's impossible to sex up so there's lots of dialogue showing the "can-do" attitude of the residents of The Moorside estate. Whether much of it actually happened is questionable, however, the actresses did spend time with their real-life counterparts so there will be some true to life scenes and dialogue.For me, it was exactly what I expected from a show on this subject.