Endings

One series ends and another begins... or in TV world, a number end and a number begin. 

'Ripper Street': Sundays won't be quite the same without an immediate antidote to the syrupy dose of 'Call the Midwife'  This wasn't the schlocky western suggested by the rowdy, fast-cut trailers, but watchable drama.  Surprise!

'Black Mirror': another post-modern, bad-boy satire with Charlie Brooker's brand of dry, cynical humour.  Where are we headed?  To hell in a virtual handcart, of-course.

'Dancing on the Edge': let's be honest, this was the biggest waste of budget, pretty costumes and performing talent in a long time.  Clearly no script editor had enough of a pair to curb Le Poliakoff's excesses.  This lumbered on from setpiece to setpiece via nothing very much, with characters mouthing portentous inanities along the lines of "Oh isn't this momentous?"  "Yes, glorious isn't it, and we're here!"  This should have had more focus and more substance, because it was about racial prejudice in the 1930s, which was not served well by this hotchpotch.  Jacqueline Bissett was in it because Poliakoff presumably wrote a part for her, and she was obviously far too polite to ask that her character actually DO something.  Nothing against slow, but this was empty as well.  No sense of tension, injustice (the hounding of Louis was frankly ludicrous) or the halcyon days of the band's first success.  Nice use of lovely old Wilton's Music Hall though.

And will this (fourth) series of 'Spiral' be the last?  We've not been bowled over by this Gallic crime passionel it must be said.  While it has some of the virtues of its Danish counterparts - complex intertwined storylines, space for character development - it is also relentlessly and fairly gratuitously unpleasant, is a little formulaic (there are only about five barrister equivalents in Paris and the same number of cops) and is starting to crack at the seams.  Josephine Karlsson's family background is being explored now, and far from the 'wrong side of the tracks' girl she was portrayed as in series one and two, she turns out to have a wealthy, if violent, Pa.  Wouldn't someone have spotted her posh accent if she'd been lying?  Or is it just that the scriptwriters forgot or couldn't be bothered with continuity?  All things considered, we'd be as happy to be shot of this sleazy lot as we would any real ones who happened to be crooked.

So now we have the spring crop of dramas to look forward to, or is that dread....