Our Girl

Series One is film making to perfection. Well, it's a character-development story, so we can excuse the lame combat scenes with actors forming a nice target while their guns are inadvertently pointing at each other. Molly Dawes is the underdog we all want to succeed, and this movie sets MD in a perfectly human situation: Loser BF, loser role models, she thinks she's smarter than she is (aren't we all guilty of this?) and she's an adult clinging to childhood.

As a Yank, I LOLed at the difference between British boot camp and the Hollywood DIs dressing down recruits. It's painful, though, to see a UK depiction of US Army officers. Tsk tsk.

Series One gives us real character growth, real drama, lots of tugs at the heart, and a scene where MD goes to a church in the last episode was perfection. The actress deserves something north of an Emmy. Series One, including the original movie, is absolutely excellent. I recommend that you watch it and then call this show "done".

Series Two casts MD away. The "more experienced" character is gorgeous and plays her part well, but who can get on board with "rich girl joins army"? The combat scenes are not well thought out, actually a little worse than series one. The story arch is forgettable and cliche. Series Two is an example of good production values mixed with "good looking perfect characters" without humanity. The boyfriend is just a face on an IPad. The officer has always been a friend. The "platoon" (squad?) is always off to the side being a bunch of noisy baboons when they're actually supposed to be Georgia's "family". This series is just two attractive guys with non-military haircuts who interact in stereotypical fashion with the pretty girl.

Series 1, Very well produced, and acted. Somewhat realistic scripting, and more than just a gung-ho action series.

Series 2 and 3, Michelle Keegan for too wooden, and far too many cleches.

Undoes the good work of series 1

This series is clunky in many ways. It's true that sometimes it comes across like an army recruitment ad. Sometimes the script, acting and plot are too clichéd and the English countryside is an unconvincing stand-in for Afghanistan. But it's fantastic to see a drama revolving around a young cockney woman, Molly Dawes, who in London has a pretty bleak and insular life with few options in the future, and so tries a different tack and joins the army. The army opens up her life, and while she's not sophisticated at all, she does go on a journey that holds your interest. Lacey Turner is very convincing as the, at first, tough London teenager who becomes a scared, out of her depth, bullied, but brave and determined soldier. Too often, British dramas depict cockney girls as tarty losers always at the pub. This series was made with a good heart and I'm enjoying it.

So disappointed that the cast was change, especially the lead, Lacy Turner. I realize she had other commitments but when I was looking for a show to stream it was her personality that caught my attention. She was cute and witty and the actors that played her family were great too. Ugh not even going to watch it anymore... how sad it started out so good!

I only saw the first two seasons as they were the only ones available through Amazon prime video at the time of this review.

I really enjoyed season one. Lacey Turner (who plays Molly Dawes) does a great job and is very believable. She is a very likable actress and brings her character to life throughout season one.

Season two, however, was not enjoyable to me for a couple reasons. First, it got away from the roots of the show and started to just get into this love triangle and used the military as a backdrop as opposed to season one where it was more military-themed.

Another reason I did not enjoy season two was the lead actress. Michelle Keegan (who plays Georgie Lane) just didn't seem to fit the role. Don't get me wrong, she's very attractive but maybe that's the problem. On screen, she comes across like a hot sorority girl and it did not seem relatable to the viewer in her role as a combat medic.

I cannot judge the series past seasons one and two. I would definitely, however, at least give season one a chance! Again, Lacey Turner does a fantastic job. So much to the point that I'm interested in seeing some of her other films.

That being said, my positive score of seven is mainly based on season one. If I were solely basing my score on season two, it would probably be a four.