"That Would Never Happen!" Dan and Ali write the real reviews of UK TV drama serials (stuff marketed as quality, if you please), telling it like it is rather than the my-mate's-the-director, I-get-party-invites, or the I-need-my-job reviews that often appear. Not to mention the I've-not-watched-it....
Friday, 28 September 2012
Homefront
'Homefront' is a bit like 'Soldier Soldier' with a war on and, therefore, no soldiers to speak of. The only bombshells dropping on the families left behind are news from the front and the sort of incestuous revelations that come from institutionalised living. It's a soap, basically, with women getting drunk and getting by while their men are fighting in Afghanistan.
Episode one had a death (and Wootton Bassett-style funeral: not sure we'd have been keen to watch if we lived there or had lost someone close), guilt, recrimination, possible infidelity, possible pregnancy and officer/NCO tensions. All in 50 minutes. Nothing very incisive or groundbreaking then, and the church service scene was straight from the dafter moments of soapdom, but it's average rather than terrible.
There will be those who disagree with this portrayal of squaddies and their families, or the fact that this doesn't address the wider picture of what the British Army are doing in 21st Century Afghanistan in the first place, but it's most likely to sit quietly in the schedules for the rest of its run. Something for the faint-hearted, perhaps.
Labels:
Antonia Thomas,
army,
Carla Henry,
Claire Skinner,
Clare Higgins,
Drama,
George Costigan,
Greg Wise,
ITV,
Nicola Stephenson,
TV,
UK,
Warren Brown
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