Reviews

The premise is unusual, although not original, and it gets worked pretty hard, to the point that it dominates the narrative, perhaps more than it should. Certain of the apparitions work very well, the little guy with the moustache gets annoying (which I suppose was the point), and Nicola Walker is good but not up to her usual standard.

As a whodunnit, it's a bit weak, the twists and turns are a little predictable. Overall, it feels like something based on a graphic novel.

Having said that, Stellan Skarsgård, as the tormented sleuth, is pretty good, and I'd like to see him in something more conventional and less gimmicky. Lesley Manville, as River's boss, gives a very strong performance.

So, pretty good, not first class, but with enough to make it worth 6 episodes of your time (unless you hate graphic novels, in which case you'll hate it).

I've only seen Series One, but...

The two aspects of the thriller genre I enjoy the most are the depiction of the dark side to a society and the psychology of the protagonists and villains.

The narrative in Reyka is a little meandering, but for a reason - because the writer tries to incorporate many of the groups and strata of South African society and explore their tensions. This is done with considerable success and there are many moments of suspense, horror and pathos built on exploring minor characters' lives.

Other production details add verisimilitude too - English dialects are often a feature of modern thrillers; but this show tops them all, with characters who speak several different languages as well as English and some of its international dialects. The 'code-switching' (Linguistic term: when multilingual speakers switch languages when speaking bout different topics) is used very well, adding a subtle social dimension, such as when speakers of indigenous South African languages also switch between English, Afrikaans and their own languages, for various reasons, and in more contexts than you might imagine - fascinating.

The major and secondary characters are also a patchwork - the narrative is slowed by exploring a number of different subplots, but the end result contributes to the same exploration of the social setting as above. There are one or two stereotypes, but most of the secondary characters are well-rounded, we even get to understand the obnoxious, loud-mouthed, young male Afrikaaner cop who I thought was going to be a minor pantomime-villain we the audience could hiss at for light relief.

Having undertaken such an ambitious task in the setting, the psychological back-story of the heroine needs to be extraordinary too - the story itself (of her traumatic childhood) would have seemed far-fetched in any other setting, but here it kind of works!

The main actors are pretty good, excellent in places; but such an intense set of interwoven stories (and particularly the backstory) are hard to portray perfectly. It's an ambitious series and it has flaws; but the things it gets right are done so well it's definitely worth it.

Ambitious (really ambitious!), exciting, dark (ugly in places), interesting, thought-provoking (educative, actually) - one of the best in the genre!

I nearly gave up at first - it starts with a bunch of drunk, angsty, promiscuous teenagers, depicted so accurately it was off-putting - but I'm glad I persisted.

I'm not nostalgic for the 90s; I was young then and it was a dull decade; but the thriller aspect was fun - over the top to just the right degree to be exciting, but also to hint truthfully at dark social realities.

The small town was brilliantly portrayed, populated by druggies, thugs, squalid in-breds living in filth and abusing their kids, moralising locals, and the long-suffering normal people forced to live far too close to them. It was all very realistic in my experience of small towns, and really brought the series to life.

The characters and acting were also very good - even the more extreme characters were just like people you might have been unlucky enough to encounter in real life; and many of them do that Nordic thing (also common in my society) of conveying their deepest emotions with a single twitch of the face.

An excellent, well-written and well-executed genre piece - highly recommended!

The first few episodes were not bad, although a.far cry from the Nicola Walker series.

I gave a 3, not a 1, because the actors are all good, even the replacement DCI, the junkies are very well acted too at first (especially Rhys Yates); and there is some genuinely good writing, and the slowly the unfolding human drama in the earlier episodes, of the sort that made Unforgotten so great.

But as Series Five progresses, politics intrudes more and more; one by one the boxes are ticked for various trendy causes: there's Covid, naughty religious people, wicked budget-cutting Tories, obviously the cause of all social ills ("your priv'lege, Bruv"), even slavery reparations gets a mention. Ultimately, the final episode was tedious, predictable and implausible - just awful.

It feels as if it was written by a committee.