Reviews

Look at most UK footage of this era showing urban areas and there'll be kids playing in the street and almost no (or no) cars. My guess is for most streets road safety for kids simply wasn't a big issue.

In this film though the single cars that appear, with almost no other people on the street, appear to be driven directly at large groups of kids (or adults) obviously in the middle of the street and brake last minute or too late. In one scene the driver then gets out to patronise them and tell them it is their fault. After he drove at them and braked too late. Huh? The scene also appears to suggest a bombed out site with lots of rubble and debris is a safer place to play.

So, as a (road) safety film, from a 2021 perspective, I'd give it 1 star only.

But as a slice of life document I found it quite memorable. That odd attitude, and the way the kids all follow the one kid with a toy wooden plane, jsut really stick with me.

I enjoyed the first series and would give that an 8 but series 2 and 3 are nowhere near as well put together. Overall, it also feels like it is borrowing from Line Of Duty (OK, I don't watch many police shows, so maybe I've missed many other similar productions) but is a long, long way behind.

What really makes the show is Joanna Scanlan. The writing clearly revolves around her and in series 1 it works well. I wouldn't call the show a comedy at all, but her character and performance is maybe irreverant?

Series 1 holds together well because beyond Scanlan the threads of all the characters blend together well and so the script has good balance. Paul Ritter is the strongest performance other than Scanlan but all are at least passable, except for Alexandra Roach's badly written, unbelievable character..

Series 2 suffers dramatically as the show switches from giving the secondary characters and threads breathing space to focusing heavily instead on Scanlan Elaine Cassidy and Roach, with Ritter as the main second string. It also suffers from real implausibility in relationships and an increasing god like, foot never wrong approach to writing Scanlan. The characters are all beginning to show themselves to be rather 1D. Plus Kate O'Flynn's character has become bizarre and the lawyer pair are comic strip style. It has also become political in its choice of bad guys and really seems to throw things in to the script just for the sake.

Series 3 thankfully eliminates Roach's character and brings some of the characters from series 1 back to life a bit more. But by now Scanlan is well and truly feet never touching the ground always gets things right, Cassidy is simply irritating, the politicisation of who is bad and who isn't has swung way beyond any reasonable balance and the bad guys are simply laughably badly written. I only bothered to stick with it to see if one or more twists appeared at the end (I was expecting Scanlan/Viv and Tom Varey/Stuart to be shown as corrupt. But nothing. Simply stuck to its dull, 1D rails.

So, overall 6 stars. But best bet is to watch series 1 and then spend your time on the vast amount of better stuff available than series 2 and 3.

I love Keaton's 1920s films so seeing lots of great clips from them is always good. There are plenty in this "documentary" so at least my time wasn't wasted.

But the actual "script" is dreadful. I don't know whether it was "researched" extremely quickly or whether the writer or director wanted to paint a particular (and very partial) picture, or both. Either way, a viewer will be misled and come away with a very partial understanding of Keaton. Yes, being at a major studio didn't work for him, but the supporting argument....

The crux of the whole thing is that the writer wants to portray Keaton as caving in and giving away his absolute creative control (ceding to MGM) despite artistic & commercial success because of immense pressure from in-law Joe Schenk, casting Schenk as black & white bad to Keaton as black & white good. Yet Keaton was not fully independent of outside control in he period just before the switch, his commercial draw appeared to be fading and Keaton is quoted (not in this film) as saying about Schenk that he "never steered me wrong in his life until then. I do not think he meant to that time". Important context ignored, presumably by Frêne (the writer).

There are many, many more omissions that completely change the viewer's understanding of Keaton, his environment, who was and wasn't responsible for x, y and z.

On top of that the non-Keaton footage choice is frankly bizarre. Most (almost all?) of it is B&W footage of trains. No problem, ties in with the production's focus on Keaton's love of trains and with The General. But while some of the footage may well be from the USA and of period with The General etc, or even of journeys Keaton made later, a large part (I wasn't counting, but my guess is a significant majority of the time) is actually footage of railways in the UK and largely 1960s. I recognise footage in there that is taken from other documentaries and has no more relevance to Keaton than would footage you could film yourself today if you went to your nearest line in any country in the world. Is this simply sloppy, or is this misleading? I'm not going to judge. But it does feel all of one with the general approach the filmmakers have made to assembling this dreadful "documentary".

Frankly the worst "documentary" I've seen in ages.