User Reviews

I found this mini series enjoyable which had an excellent cast including the very mean and moody Jamie Foreman and found his character's thousand yard stare to baby brother Joey (Martin Kemp) intimidating to witness.

I know that some have commented about Jamie Foreman's character receiving no repercussions after killing the Manager of the restaurant, however, you get the sense that the father played by David Calder is afraid of losing him again after a 10 year absence. Having said that surely making him manager of the restaurant after killing the previous one was highly unlikely and you would think that they would want him as far way from the restaurant as possible.

Also we do not get a real explanation as to why Jamie Foreman's character came back from exile and the mystery of the £25,000 that his American wife brings upon arrival sadly never gets explained.

The last criticism is that Martin Kemp's character has an older daughter who seems to becoming wiser to her father's criminal shady dealings and it would have been a nice touch to possibly see her spill the beans, much in the same way as Meadow Soprano did in The Sopranos.

Summing up there are a few unanswered questions and it would have been nice for there to have been a second series, to see what would have come of the main characters.

Overall it is worth a watch and you can find it on Amazon at a cheap price.

The opening music shamelessly attempts to evoke The Godfather theme. And it's very transparently also an attempt to make a British "Sopranos"...and it could've been damned interesting.

You had Martin Kemp with those moody, piercing eyes and great screen presence who's cornered the market in Brit gangster roles ever since he played one of the notorious Kray brothers.

You have Jamie Foreman who was born to play Bill Sykes (in Polanski's Oliver Twist.) Just look at that mug.

You had David Calder, a superb actor, who I adored as Gemma Redgrave's kind, patient, elegant, and supportive papa, the distinguished Harley St. physician, Dr. Robt. Bramwell, in the excellent "Bramwell" series as well as a gay Russian double agent on "MI-5" aka "Spooks."

And, best of all, you have the exquisite Simone Lahbib...who deserves another successful high-profile series after making "Bad Girls" the classic it's become in its first 3 seasons. Watching her painfully vulnerable, sexually frustrated (because her brothers won't let any man get close to her) borderline alcoholic character here brimming with barely repressed rage and resentment...and then the surprising turn she takes at the very open-ended, up in the air finale, to become more, not less, involved with the running of the family business would've made a continued series a more interesting prospect. But they overplayed their hand with the melodrama.

Dear oh dear. As both previous commentators have remarked, this oozing sack of clichéd vomit is a tired retread of almost every gangster cliché in the book (members of the firm singing along heartily to Sinatra while exchanging weary looks, one of the family being "a bit wild").

My own personal hangup with this show is yet again they tried to make the Cutler's out to be decent people who just happen to sometimes kill other people.

COBBLERS! These are scum who trade in human misery and in the very first episode Dave's ludicrously mis-scripted indifference to the "silly man" he pushed out of a window for daring to try and do his job is so out of place for a supposedly organised crime family (to put it in perspective it is made quite clear the restaurant is a. Famous and b. Popular and this act would be the equivalent of someone being murdered in Jamie Oliver's Fifteen).

I'd like to believe that the script was hijacked by the kind of cretins that ruined Drop the Dead Donkey (Joy really becomes a psycho instead of just being bad tempered) and Men Behaving Badly (stealing the urinal from their local boozer when it was demolished).

Utter garbage. The first episode left a thoroughly unpleasant taste in my mouth ("I'm not having him talking like that to me when I'm speaking to Eddie!") and it appears to have escaped the writer's notice that Dave Cutler wouldn't survive 10 minutes in a real crew and is in dire need of a good kicking (read. Unsympathetic tosser with no redeeming features who we are supposed to find endearing because he loves his Mum and Dad).

The only plus points are some high production values and some good acting from David Calder and Simoe Lahbid.

Never have gangsters appeared so unrealistically filmed.

*SPOILERS*

An utterly dire attempt to "do" The Sopranos in London's East End. It's a shame that a clutch of such good actors wasted their efforts on this bag of spew.

I loathe British soaps and wanted to avoid this as it starred Martin Kemp, virtually recreating his role from Eastenders, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and for about the first 45 minutes it was pretty good. The Cutler family are gangsters, feared and respected in their "manor" and fiercely loyal to each other. Extorting protection money from local businesses they set their sights on a new restaurant that has a 2 year waiting list for a table.

The casual threats made by the Cutler family to Rory McLeod owner of the restaurant are wonderfully underplayed. The Cutler's want a cut of the business and with silky charm and strategic violence get their way. The plot then Jumps the Shark (rare to do it in the first episode!) when the returned prodigal son casually murders the resturant manager during an argument over using his mobile phone.

The reactions of the Cutler family to the crisis are understandable and coldly efficient but it's the lack of conscience on anybody's part to what happened that is wholly unrealistic. These are not Made Men, they are a family and even Joey's disgust is only over Dave's lack of self-control NOT any regret that he murdered a man for no good reason. If Christopher from The Sopranos had killed someone in a public place over virtually nothing, Tony would have slapped him around and removed him from any position of responsibility in the family until he could prove he could keep his cool. Dave not only isn't castigated by his father for putting the family at risk but in episode 3 is made manager of the resturant.

This was the first aspect to fly in the face of good reason, as was the ease with which the chief family nasty infiltrates the hospital in order to silence Liam.

Second BIG black mark was in episode two after Ted decides to let a man keep most of the money he owes the Cutlers even though the guy had to rob a post office in order to pay up on time. The Cutlers are guests at the man's daughter's wedding where he gets drunk and throws the money in Ted's face, upset that his efforts were pointless. Err... hello! These people could kill you for not paying them back, the money was theirs to decide what to do with and they LET you keep it, you had to prove you could come through.

My biggest hang up with this show was that with such fine talent on show they could have paid a little more care to keeping the story in the realms of reality.

I gave up afte 2 episodes so do let me know if all this was sorted out later on.

A real shame, this could have been great.