didi-5

(2012-05-01 23:04:41)

Watchable but a bit disappointing

Riddled with clichГѓВ©s, this daytime drama about the land girls (womenconscripted to work on the land during World War II) is in five partsand boasts a competent cast in a sanitised script - a very PC andsimplistic view of a country under siege.We first meet the four new land girls at the start of the first episode- snooty Nancy (Summer Strallen) who wears high heels and expects asoldier to carry her luggage from the station, sisters Annie (ChristineBottomley) and Bea (Jo Woodcock) - one bitter, one naive, and salt ofthe earth Joyce (Becci Gemmell) whose family were wiped out in theCoventry bombings. We also meet Esther (Susan Cookson), who keeps thegirls in order, black-marketeer and farmer Finch (Mark Benton), and theLord and Lady of the House (Nathaniel Parker and Sophie Ward).There's also a Home Guard Sergeant, Tucker (Danny Webb) who likes thefeeling of being in charge, and in town there's a group of GIs.From here it is very much ticking the boxes - there's an illicitaffair, a soldier going AWOL, suspected collaborators, a marriage basedon hate, and a bit of political correctness about black GIs andsegregation. It's watchable enough but somehow I was expecting a bitmore.Although it looks great and as if a bit of money has been thrown at it,Land Girls is historically shaky and very much has the air of 'we'veseen all this before'. A bit of a missed opportunity.

Veit

(2012-05-01 12:09:24)

Stir Well and Serve Cold

This program has very fine actors doing their best with woefullyinferior scripts. Every character is a stereotype of others we haveseen before. Time and time again they behave stupidly in order toadvance the plot and intensify the false sense of drama. Sorry, but itjust rings hollow and false. There are precious few honest steps takenthrough the course of "Land Girls." Instead, the audience ismanipulated, often with the use of modern PC sensibilities. I haveforced myself to watch all fifteen episodes, and it has not been aneasy chore. The scripts of Dominique Moloney, Dale Overton, PaulMatthew Thompson, Jude Tindall, Joy Wilkinson, and even series creatorRoland Moore fall flat, dumbed down to the shallowest of viewers.And then, in the midst of all this mediocrity, there comes a singlebrilliant episode that shows what might have been. Rob Kinsman haswritten a terrific script for "The Enemy Within," which is episode 3 ofseries 3. Here the dialogue crackles with intelligence. Suddenly, weare confronted with real people, not television templates. Afterwatching "The Enemy Within," I thought perhaps "Land Girls" had finallyfound its stride. But, alas, it was not meant to be. Back to the sameold predictability we go, and our patience is tested by stupidcharacters behaving stupidly. Clearly, this production should havehired Rob Kinsman from the start and stayed with him for the entirerun. Then they might have really had something to be proud of. As itis, all too often the result is embarrassingly bad.