JurijFedorov

I watched a few episodes and I get it. The TV show tries to be boring as a nod to the title. Sorta meta and then it's fine? A writer becomes a detective yet he's terrible at it and the detective stories are small in scope even in these short episodes. I do love detective stories, but this is not quite enough. The boredom I do accept as it's part of the idea. But unfortunately it looks like the writer uses the TV show to tell us about his life. The main character is a writer like him and has the same name. The episodes are slowed down by long personal sexual escapades stories or sexual frustration stories and everyone is carefully listening to minutes long monologues about some sex thing. I was looking for the humor or point in the "boring" scenes, but there is nothing. It's not that it's boring. It's that there is no point to it.

It's also a shame we just follow the lead and we are in an overall dull environment. It's plain old NY and we follow the hipster scene. A writer, his comic artist friend, his rich boss, and just random nobodies that drop in. Unfortunately there is no clear storyline to any episode they mainly focus on gags and people that may feature for less than a minute just to make the gag work. We just see the detective fail over and over again often in scenes that just happen to him out of nowhere.

Historical accuracy: 8

Acting: 7 Dialogue: 6 Camera work: 6 Editing: 7 Budget: 6 Story: 5 Theme: 3 Pure entertainment factor: 7 Video quality: 3 Special effects: NA Pacing: 7 Suspension of disbelief: 5 Non-cringe factor: 3 Lack of flashbacks: 4

Some seem to rate this low because the lead actress fakes her accent in a way that seems off in all scenes. It's indeed jarring especially as she's playing a real person who is still in the media so all know her real voice. Maybe they wanted to make it different from real life and forced her to act weird? In this TV show we jump from Prince Andrew to the interviewer. Of course we hate Andrew. Hence the good guys are supposed to be the heroic oasis for us. Yet when her accent is this bad we feel eerie with her too and there is no one else we follow so that's why the whole thing feels off. All these people seem like rich spoiled jerks and we don't want to look at any of them.

I think the movie Scoop did it way better storywise. It felt more real and fun as it was about finding out the truth while here we just hang out with people without any goal to anything. Here things just happen to these people and the writers didn't quite figure out why the events happened like how the interview team tricked Andrew into the interview. In Scoop his secretary sees him as an icon hero who can do no wrong and he eats it up - he is quite arrogant. Everyone else is warning him not to do the interview. But the interview crew is constantly contacting her and making her feel important so they become friends. And then she asks him to do the interview with them. She feels like she knows both sides and forces it all to happen. In reality she didn't know either side of course. Didn't know the interview crew would be more direct and crude than they were towards her and didn't know Prince Andrew actually looks like an arrogant fool to the public as she doesn't see him that way. It was an amazing storyline that made the movie work. Here they fully remove it as we follow the woman doing the interview not the woman setting it up. That's a bad focus as that's the least interesting part to the story. The same happened in A Very English Scandal. There too we have a curious story but follow the wrong people in the wrong timeline. Here we mainly see the interviewer whine about any little thing in her life as that's what replaces the real story and real drama. At one point online critics repost an eye-roll she did during an interview. She starts complaining about this for multiple scenes constantly making it out to be a huge disaster and a witch hunt as she's an easy woman to target. And no matter how many scenes with her complaining they throw at us at no point in time did I feel any sympathy for this rich semi-famous woman in a powerful position with a loving husband, kids, and a dog. They constantly show us scenes of her taking care of the dog and how hard this is. Again, this is not significant enough drama to carry a TV show. It actually makes her look spoiled.

Something to note. One the nose writing can be fixed. His daughters at one point talk about him and say "Remember when he returned from the Falkland war and girls were screaming his name". Stuff like this needs to be changed so that characters talk to each other not at us. They would mock him and not use the word remember. When you make a fun statement you don't overdo it. You underdo it. If you write natural dialogue the viewers will try to listen more carefully as it's engaging. Hence it can be a tad more vague when it's good. But even so you can repeat the Falkland wars story another time if you feel some viewers may have missed the point. He was seen as a very attractive guy at that point as he was royal, rich, and now a war hero. You can't use flashbacks as that never works. But you could for example show us someone holding a photo of him in uniform and then ask about it. An older woman then buds in as she recalls the stories about him back then. Clear and direct storytelling without overdoing it with on the nose dialogue.

Then many viewers point out how dark it is. Even indoor scenes are often night dark despite lamps everywhere. One could assume he maybe liked to be in dark rooms? But even so we have real photos from various rooms depicted here. It's quite clear this is a production error not a choice. Scenes always look a tad too dark compared to how it really should look like and brightening it 30% would make all scenes look like the photos from the real events. Unless they on purpose tried to make it look less realistic? Do people in UK have 10 lamps in each room with no light being produced? Are all days in UK dark and grey no matter the time?

These issues I pointed out are very much significant. It's stuff ALL viewers will note as they are glaring errors created by lazy and inexperienced filmmakers. It's a shame as the foundation, the true story itself, is great and very engaging. One just has to compare it to other ways to learn about the story like documentaries, books, and the movie. And it just fails compared to what else you can find. But I did enjoy it and despite it always feeling lazy and cheap, with below par dialogue, it's always fun to explore real history. The first 2 episodes are somewhat historically relevant the last episode goes more into the cringe whining family melodrama. It ends up feeling dark and moody which is a great shame.