User Reviews

Have loved 'Taggart' (another show gotten into during my teenage years) for a long time, although the more deliberate and even grittier Taggart and Jardine periods to me are superior to Burke's. Although it was actually through watching the late afternoon reruns of the Burke period episodes (starting from "Compensation" right up to when the episodes became shorter, too short in my mind) at one point that got me hooked, the Taggart and Jardine episodes were actually seen a lot later.

'Taggart' was really running out of ideas by this point, and one can see signs of that in "The Best and the Brightest". An episode that started off very strongly and with a lot of promise, and then ran out of gas and became nothing special. It is an improvement over the pretty lacklustre previous episode "Law", but if anybody is wanting to see 'Taggart' in its prime they are not going to find that here in "The Best and the Brightest". A long way from terrible, but considering how well it began it could have been a lot better as an overall whole.

By all means, "The Best and the Brightest" does have good things. It is typically slick-looking and it is good that the photography doesn't try to do too much stylistically, though will agree that atmosphere-wise it does look a little on the too clean side which takes away a little from the grit. The theme song is still memorable and has an appealing nostalgic vibe, as well as well suited to the tone of the show. The acting from all is good, with all four regulars faring strongly.

Complete with a nice chemistry that is humorous in parts and intense in others. The episode starts off very promisingly, with a shocking murder method, intrigue and with ideas that show potential. Jackie's subplot was quite sweet.

It though could have gelled slightly better with the case in terms of balance, it did threaten to take over too much. While the case starts off very well, it sadly becomes a conventional stringing along of old ideas with little variation. Was not that surprised by the identity of the killer and the motive seemed somewhat too trivial at the end of the day, it actually would have been better if the episode stuck to the first suspected motive.

While there are some very interesting ideas here in "The Best and the Brightest", there was potential for more being done with them. The script has moments of levity and grit, but too many times it's fairly by the numbers. The music overall would have been perfect in the 80s and early 90s but by this point it was sounding ten plus years out of date, on top of that the music is not always very well placed.

Overall, didn't really grab me and had good things. 5/10.