Coma

After last weeks excruciately awful Love Rat I was hopeful that with jason watkins heading the cast ,that Coma would break the cycle of successive rubbish being served up by budget broadcasters Channel 5. Lack of finance has never stopped Ken Loach producing brilliant and relevant drama. However Coma could have been so much better in dealing with the problem of low life adolescent criminality. Unfortunately the makers of Coma chose to take the path of allowing actors such as jonas armstrong overact his part as local psycho gangster. Are we really living in the dystopian world portrayed in Coma. I don't believe so. Just remember mr Watkins to strike this one off your cv.

Coma is a brilliantly tense thriller, over four hours of increasing intensity, there are no loops here just escalations.

It centres around a mild mannered Jason Watkins and a single moment, tormented by just about everything and anyone he snaps and his world unravels. Pretty soon he's sitting uncomfortably in wine bars with petty gangsters and lying to the police.

It is also awful, a great set of core names wondering what they are doing here. It is filmed in Eastern Europe and that doesn't get lost - it simply looks nothing like anywhere in the UK.

Somehow this manages to be enthralling, tense and awful at the same time.

It's 4 hours - it's channel 5 - there are worse things on TV to watch!

I haven't watched a whole British fictional drama series for quite a while now. What have I been missing? Absolutely nothing if this series is anything to go by.

One of the many ludicrous aspects of this 'drama' was that it was filmed in Hungary but they tried and failed miserably to pretend it was set in the UK. Hope the actors and crew had a nice jolly though.

Knowing Jason Watkins real life back story I really hate to criticise him, but his acting in this production would have been marked ungraded in O Level drama. He was badly cast. Still it puts meals on the table.

The comical plot and Gangster family stretched the realms of realism until it snapped around Episode 2.

As in all modern day Police related dramas the DS naturally ticked all those 2020s ubiquitous boxes. I realise this isn't real life, but still.

I've given a generous 2 star rating as Claire Skinner really did give it her best despite the best efforts of the scriptwriter.

Lastly my last venture into Channel 5 was to watch The Good Ship Murder. Perhaps it's time I channel hopped a bit more vigorously?

Felt compelled to leave a review after seeing the less than fair criticism given to this. For me the acting was great, the story was decent, it was filmed at a good pace and kept me engaged and watching right up to the end. The young boy Jonas Armstrong was very good and I can see him in lots of dramas in the future. This is not some big budget Hollywood movie with Oscar winning performances and I'm not really sure why everything has to be. It's a good drama, on a low scale budget and much better than Love Rat which was shown on channel 5 the previous week. To me Jason Watkins is always worth a watch and he and the rest of the cast did a great job.

Firstly I read some other reviews just now before posting this. Some are very harsh and I think many people just expect too much. This obviously isn't going to be a big budget BBC or ITV drama, it's channel 5. Not saying it should get a free pass but the cast and crew are working on a different scale so it should be kept in mind when reviewing.

Like others I'm a big fan of Jason Watkins and he can't turn in a bad performance in my view. This show has an intriguing premise and as time goes on it does get a big bogged down in stereotypical gangster stuff but it has some decent twists and turns. A solid seven from me.