Imagine 'Private Benjamin' crossed with 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and you're close. It's hard to see this as a drama rather than a piece of jingoism for the British Army. We aren't 'Enders fans but we saw Lacey Turner in 'True Love' and she was good, as she is here, and just as well because this would have been unwatchable otherwise. She's Molly Dawes, from Stratford (not the one Upon Avon, as she points out), a mouthy member of a clan reminiscent of the Gallaghers on 'Shameless's Chatsworth Estate. After a particularly unrewarding night out she jettisons her rowdy clan and her smooth-talking conman boyfriend and joins the army. She finds it hard, especially as she's swiftly identified as the troublesome recruit. Slowly she adjusts, resolves to make it and... you see where this is going. No real surprises. Everyone in the army is essentially comradely and a believer in tough love. Everyone outside it is a waster or a loser. Whether or not she gets blown to bits in her subsequent tour out in Afghanistan, it's all been worth it because she's made something of herself. Cue credits.
Ms Turner, we repeat, is very good - if unstretched - as are the rest of the cast, but as a recruiting ad for the army it backfires somewhat. If you're sporty and you like being shouted at all day, plus you like a feeling of belonging (to a family, say, or a cult, either will do...) oh and being shot at, join up now. Be warned, though, you'll be in company who don't understand terms like 'sorting the wheat from the chaff' and have no idea that there were such things as rats and gas in the WWI trenches. If that were the real state of the army we'd have been invaded far more recently than 1066.
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