La profesora

Every so often, another scandalous story on inappropriate teacher-pupil relations will make the headlines, so that the story played out here will always have a tabloid-type topicality about it. The ubiquitous Sheridan Smith is the vivacious Miss at a secondary school whose unconventional barrier-breaking teaching style and general mildly-rebellious demeanour makes her a favourite with her young pupils. She loves the job, teaching English and is also popular with most of her staff-mates. Away from work however, she's a bit of a mess. Divorced, she likes nothing better than partying all the time and getting into alcohol-fuelled one-night stands, much to the disapproval of her retired widower dad, himself an ex-headmaster, with whom she lives, if less than harmoniously.

Unfortunately for her, her carefree, if not reckless social life is about to catch her up as she becomes the centre of a sex-scandal when one of her young pupils, in whom she's invested a little more time, accuses her of having sex with him in a nightclub toilet when she was out of her face and on her own. Fanned by a zealous female colleague who's the definition of starchy, the matter blows up into a fully fledged scandal and sees her lose her job and then her social position especially after she pleads guilty to the charge to protect, or so she thinks, the boy from further emotional distress.

Meanwhile she hits the bottle even more until she finds rock bottom, forced out of the family home by her unsupportive dad and generally made a social pariah and the butt of cruel attacks by former acquaintances and unsurprisingly, anonymous tabloid-fuelled members of the public who daub her car and jeer at her in public.

But what if she didn't do it and was actually being set up for her fall? As she pulls herself together, she gradually connects the dots in a carefully-orchestrated revenge scheme aimed at her, originating from an incident at a different school some fifteen years before.

If you're prepared to overlook the plot holes here (who waits fifteen years to carry out a sophisticated revenge-crime?) and unlikely plot devices (particularly the one involving Smith's best-friend fellow-teacher, who herself becomes groomed by the perp), this four-part drama had enough twists and turns and minor cliff-hanging reveals in it to keep my wife and I interested all the way through. Smith is good value as usual as the traumatised teacher who pulls herself together to get her life back on track, although, rather like her stalker himself, we certainly didn't see the out-of-nowhere dramatic finish coming down the road.

We all know nowadays that the grooming of children of course is a serious subject and I'm not altogether sure that hanging it on an old-fashioned revenge plot as was done here was completely appropriate, but putting that aside, this on the whole was watchable if not exactly cutting-edge prime-time TV entertainment.

Sheridan Smith is a great actress but this series was a little odd. The plot was there and it was good but the character was weird in the way that I couldn't tell whether she wanted to have a relationship with him as she seemed infatuated with him in a way. Still worth a watch but yeah, a little odd.

I enjoyed this series a lot and found it thrilling, was eager to see next episode throughout. Good actors, for me most of them new (Im not living in UK). The last episode went from an exciting upper to a complete downer cause we didnt get to see how things went with any of the characters, and in the end the scene between the teacher and her student left us with many questions. Its like the episode went from #4 to #10 and skipped all info in between. I hate endings like that coming too fast and think they could have made the storyline more complete with at least five more episodes.

Series 1 was watchable and believable in parts, but Series 2 was hopelessly 'huggy', and with so many 'I love you's it could have been an episode fewer. Of course the death was a tragedy, but the over-emotion shown by the staff and pupils was used as padding. The complicated storyline wasn't bad, though (as so often in this sort of modern drama) the main character becomes the investigator and that is unrealistic. The police seemed in a muddle, but DNA would have solved the second case within a few hours.

One recurring complaint is the trend, presumably for financial reasons, to make these dramas abroad (Budapest for Series 1 and Ireland for Series 2), with occasional drone or long-distance shots of Bradford or Manchester respectively, without the cast. I wonder if other viewers find this irritating; I do!

This was a good yarn that could have been a bit better directed but it was enjoyable and kept you wondering. Sheridan Smith's portrayal of a flawed but brilliant and committed teacher was exemplary. Some of the other characters were a bit on the weak side, but overall it was well worth the watch.