The six-episode series tells the story of four employees - Anna, Louie, Kat and Nancy - who work at a Welsh brewery under a cruel and manipulative boss, Jack Evans. After a work party, the women decide to bundle Jack into a car and dump him in the woods as a prank, to teach him a lesson. However, Jack is found dead not long after, prompting the four women to enter into a pact of silence. She then went to the work party with her brother to tell her mum Anna about what Jack had done and that she was pregnant.
However as they arrived they saw their mum and her friends bundling Jack into the boot of their car. When Jack saw Tamsin there he taunted her about the baby and she snapped and suffocated him with a plastic bag. Anna is the person in the know when it comes to the investigation seeing as her husband is a policeman.
Louie has familial ties to Jack as his aunt - not that he treated her with any kind of respect as a result. They even got in a row at the party for his reckless drug use and frivolous spending of the family cash. Did she perhaps, in a moment of blind panic, kill him off to protect herself, and maybe even get her hands on the business? If anyone has the most obvious reason to kill Jack, it's Tish.
After an arrestingly twisty first few episodes - The Pact, a somewhat far-fetched crime drama set at a Welsh brewery - falls away in big chunks.
What makes it worth a gander at all is the incredible cast which has no right to be this good - they all turn in great performances and to see Marsan and the brilliant Aneurin Barnard as a fractious father and son is glorious.
Ade Edmondson is also there. If this had cut out a lot of the extraneous fat and red herringy side-plots and been three episodes rather than six it could've been really fascinating - but sadly it wasn't. There was a time when a new BBC drama was and event. Sadly, this is no longer the case and The Pact illustrates the depths to which the corporation has sunk. It is hard to imagine a more uninteresting ensemble of characters and actors.
The acting is truly awful, the storylines totally implausible, full of inconsistencies and holes. The main characters are just plain irritating and what was that accent of Anna's Laura Fraser?
She hails from Glasgow, but sounded nothing like my Glaswegian relatives. I couldn't work out if she was Scottish, Welsh, Irish or Chinese I've watched the first 2 episodes and don't know if I feel it's worth watching any more.
There are some quite pretty shots of Welsh scenery, but the story seems to be the same old same old: a crime is committed and the focus shifts from one character to another as we try to work out whodunit.
I heard Rakie Ayola who plays DS Holland interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends programme and she seemed to be overly pleased that a scene where she refers to her hatred of owls and a scene where she catches a packet of pork scratchings had not been left on the cutting room floor.
This show is crying out for some quirkiness, but I'm not convinced that pork scratchings supply enough "quirk" to make this worth watching. Really enjoyed this original BBC series. Great storyline paired with some fantastic acting resulted in an intriguing, twisty thriller that kept me yearning for more. The end was very unexpected, loved that I wasn't able to guess it.
One of the best crime thrillers I've seen in a very long time. More of these please!! Major spoilers If I went around and killed every guy who treated me like crap would I be able to say "I had to" and everyone scrambled to cover it up and feel sorry for me? I think not. She was a downright murderer. Who was also a brat to her mum even while knowing it was her fault that she was being blamed for a murder. And a brat after she told her parents the truth. Secondly I swear no one ever pulled his pants up but they were pulled up when the girl killed him, which bugged me the whole season.
I was so angry at Anna for not telling her husband from the very beginning. I highly doubt that she wouldn't have in real life. I felt most sorry for her husband throughout the whole show until the end when he, as a cop, allowed his daughter to get away with murder. The show was still entertaining and kept me wondering what would happen.
It was a little obvious that the daughter was involved with how much they showed her. I also thought Nancy would confess to make up for taking the money. She should have said it was her deadbeat husband Richard. But the twists were still pretty decent the way they were done. Acting was pretty good. Marlburian 28 May TV and film companies must be in a dilemma about how to portray contemporary events. It was nice to see Jason Hughes "demoted" from his detective-inspector rank in "Midsomer Murders".
But there were plot weaknesses from the start. As has already been remarked: the four women - including the brewery owner's sister - worked on the production line, when a couple at least seemed to enjoy an affluent life style.
OK, I know that unemployment is a problem in South Wales and that house prices are low but And would they have taken such drastic action against their employer, who despite being very drunk, recognised them? It was confusing when Episode 3 I think ended on a cliff-hanger, only for Episode 4 to commence on a completely different note. I wondered if I had accidentally missed an episode. It turned out that we'd been taken back in time to see things from the daughter's perspective.
And it never became clear why Arwel was so determined to destroy his son's laptop and refuse the police admittance to search his property. Presumably he knew there would be incriminating evidence about Jack's misdeeds? And the two children put on an impressive cycling performance to trail the car in the dark to the woods! Surprised IMDb are allowing such sexist and borderline discriminatory comments and reviews about this series.
As far as I'm concerned, it isn't brilliant but it kept me watching. As, generally, a non-binger, I binged this whole series. What does that say It's a decent storyline but the story really is about friends and family and how they stick together when the going gets tough. Rather heart warming in some capacity and, agreeably, disappointing in others. Definitely worth a watch regardless.
Just stick with it and you'll become involved. Still on episode 1 and that'll be all I'll manage. Not only did a dead man manage to pull his trousers up but the 4 extremely drunken women sobered up quickly, too. It's really stupid. The BBC does it again and produces a roll of the mill drama with a poor script. What was worse though, was how unoriginal it all was. Boxes to tick: A black female detective - tick. A mixed-race same sex relationship - tick. A policeman with family problems - tick.
Mainly female cast - tick. Bad male characters - tick. Instead, it tries too hard to focus on relationships and emotions. Broadchurch springs to mind as the inspiration for this formulaic show. This is yet another drama that is well produced, filmed, and acted, but made me wonder how it got commissioned because the script is just not remarkable in any way.
Then I remembered it's the BBC handing out contracts to their friends. I recommend it if you have nothing else to watch. As viewers we are willing to suspend disbelief, to give a drama a chance to hook us.
The Pact started badly with that dreadful party where they ended up with a captive Aneurin Barnard in the woods. He clearly wasn't dead when they abandoned him, but apart from informing us that he was universally disliked at the brewery, we were given no reason for this behaviour. The plot meandered from then onwards, and I still don't know why someone like him who has been in some excellent productions, bothered with this drama.
The same went for the rest of the cast, and the lady cop was casual and lacked tenacity. The beautiful settings were a welcome distraction from a very plodding drama, such a disappointment considering BBC's recent offerings. Hayley's Crime. Cropper's Guilt. If you can suspend your disbelief you'll need to work hard on this aspect the reward is a cataclysmic, Shakespearean set of unlikely events in a surreal tale. Some of the double-standards and twisted exchanges between the characters are sublime, particularly as the heat rises and absurdity prevails.
Some key issues for example, the lifestyle of the factory workers is way beyond reality Also, with regard to police protocols, the acting can be stiff and the negligence within the investigation is simply hard to dis believe on a biblical level - refer to my suspension of disbelief point above to search for your coping strategy.
The phone tracking scene is worth its weight in gold - a delightful twist in the tale. Dramatic and fulfilling. There are some unanswered plot developments which aren't developed. Nice touch. At this point, Tamsin walked away and found a plastic bag, which she then used to suffocate Jack before leaving him for dead. Despite Tamsin being the real culprit, the series ended with Nancy being sentenced to a prison term after she admitted to the murder, claiming it was her and not Tamsin who killed Jack.
When she admitted she was the blackmailer to Anna, she was unsurprisingly shut out by her friends and vowed to do anything possible to gain their forgiveness. After she had been questioned about her presence in the woods that night, Nancy set about cutting several ties from her old life, including her husband and her priest, and handed herself into the police claiming to be the murderer.
The police fully accepted this falsified version of events and ceased their investigations into the other women, with the deeply religious Nancy insisting she was doing her penance for her earlier transgressions. Despite initially refusing to accept the will, Louie has been convinced to keep it by Cat and Tish, who end the series as a stable couple.
Sign in. Back to Main menu What to watch Film news.
0コメント