Friday, April 10, 2015

Scott and Bailey

We've been watching the first series of Scott and Bailey, starring Suranne Jones and Lesley as the two detectives Bailey and Scott respectively, with Amelia Bullmore as their boss. Bullmore gets most of the best lines, but Suranne Jones is excellent as the detective whose clever in the detective area but hopeless in her love life. Sharp is great too, with a nice line in sarcasm, and a good deal more wisdom than her sidekick.

The blokes in it get the thin edge of the wedge: they play most of the villains, of course, but in general they show the worst side of men, the juvenile, the sulky husband, the sergeant who's in love with Sharp's character and keeps pestering her (he's actually played by Sharp's real life husband, Nicholas Gleaves) and worst of all, the barrister who keeps twirling Jones' character around his little finger (Rupert Graves at his slimiest).

The stories are almost secondary to the characters, and some of them are spread out over the whole six episodes, while others are tidied up within one.

Enjoyable over all, and they make a change from the far more frequent bloke detective series, though at least the English produce these kinds of series and focus on characters more than action, in general.

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