I’m afraid it can’t be a totally positive review. It’s well made, thrilling and everything, but all based on a premise that is so so wrong it is hard to accept, both Harry and Ben act in such a wrong way… I mean, I don’t know if maybe this is normal behavior for an English kid, but I am so very sure that Harry acted in such a wrong wrong way, it is hard to just accept it. After that, everything that happens is a consequence, because he didn’t know how to turn back to the right way. The chilling thing is that Harry thinks, and is sure of this, that he tried to do the right thing all along, that he did it to protect people… and look at how he helped Edgar, he caused him so much distress that he hanged himself! People out there, if someone is troubled, this is not the right way to help! How much troubled? Edgar knows it’s wrong, but he can’t stop looking at ped+pornography, and Harry telling him to stop is no more helpful than when his mother tells him the same thing, has anyone ever stopped taking drugs simply because someone told them to stop it, just like that, on their own, a simple decision and voilà, they stopped?
Harry tried to protect Edgar in the worst possible way, by covering for him. I could understand it for a moment, for as long as they thought it was just simple porn in that usb key, but once they learned what was really in there, then no, covering is no more acceptable.
More comments to follow.
There are only four episodes, but three would have been better, there were scenes to fill the time.
1-
It’s a psychological drama where a vicar who at first tries to do the right thing, or what seems right to him but is actually not, ends up in a terrible situation he can’t get out of. He’s a British vicar liked by everyone, he has a wife, Mary, and a teenage son, Ben, that he loves. He pays good money for Janice to give Ben Maths lessons. Well, Ben says 70£ but I don’t really know how long she stays, it’s a lot for just an hour but maybe it’s not or maybe she usually stays longer… still seems a lot though.
One Sunday Edgar runs to Harry begging him to hide a usb key because there’s porn inside it and his mother is coming, and she will check everywhere. Reluctantly, Harry takes it and leaves. Edgar is a very troubled young man and his fanatic mom doesn’t help, it rather reminds me of Carrie’s mother, although to be honest this one does have a reason. She still goes at it the wrong way.
Harry drives Janice home from the train station, and empties his pockets as soon as he enters. When Janice says she needs to give Ben some files but there is no connection, he grabs the usb that Harry left in the coin tray and gives it to her. She plugs it in before Harry has time to stop it. This is the only bit I didn’t really understand so far: Ben barely looks at them: Janice’s shocked face and Harry’s embarrassed one and lies saying that it’s his key, it’s just porn, dad didn’t know, apparently totally oblivious to what is going on. Now I wonder, is it really normal for Ben to think that Harry carries porn in his pockets? No jokes, and the question is not if Harry ever watches it or not, the question is: is it common for a teenage boy to see his teacher’s surprised face and quickly jump to the obvious conclusion that his father keeps porn in that drive? It wasn’t just a joke, at the end of the show he’s still sure that’s what it was. This was a very weird scene for me, maybe he thought it was the only thing that could shock so much his unmarried teacher? Or the only thing that could worry/embarrass his father so much? Well, he’s a teenager boy, point there, but I don’t like how it was played, it doesn’t sound normal when listening to it the first time. It may make sense now thinking about it and all, but when watching it I didn’t like it.
Anyway, I could clearly see that it was something else, Janice looked really shocked. She wants Ben out of the room and then she speaks to Harry and reveals that there’s children in the videos, that’s horrible abuse. Of course she thinks ben is involved, he just said so himself, so Harry tries desperately to convince her that he’s not. Harry tries to tell her the usb key is not Ben’s, a guy gave it to him in the Church, but he won’t reveal Edgar’s name because he once tried to kill himself, and Harry wants to protect him - and what a good job he did of that, huh? Edgar needed real help, while all that time he was left alone to deal with it all by himself and he obviously wasn’t strong enough, had Harry gone to the police things would have changed for Edgar too, maybe he could have received the hep he desperately needed. And those children too deserved more than a: let’s just ignore there’s this stuff here and not think about it.
She wants to go away, Harry won’t let her until he can persuade her of the truth. She gets scared of him blocking her way, he insists, keeps her there because he’s sure that she’ll go straight to the police accusing Ben. Somehow, for some reason, he opens the door leading to the basement and she falls down the stairs. He closes the door. (Did he open it on purpose, did he make her fall? I’m not sure, I thought she fell but am not sure).
He tells Ben to go to his party, that Janice went away, and when Mary comes back home he tells her everything. Harry hopes to record Edgar’s voice admitting that the usb key is his so he’ll finally convince Janice and let her go. Edgar is so troubled, he can’t admit it, not to the vicar, not to God or even to himself out loud, so Harry does the only thing he can think of: he tells Edgar to put it all in his computer (Harry’s) so he’ll take the blame. His wife is vehemently against this but he insists it’s the only thing he can do. He even downloads and prints more of that horror to make the lie more believable, but it’s all useless. When people tell him that Edgar hanged himself and named him in his last note, he hopes he confessed and that this will convince Janice that Ben’s got nothing to do with it, but no, Edgar couldn’t say it; Edgar only wanted it to stop and didn’t want the vicar to take the blame for him so he wrote not to believe the vicar because he’s protecting “someone else”. Making things even worse, but he couldn’t know.
Harry and Mary talk about it but he sees no way out to protect Ben, so he puts an old heater in the basement “to keep her warm”, but actually because it’s sort of broken and the carbon monoxide will kill her. He locks the door even if she’s handcuffed and puts tape all around the door and on the lock, not knowing that Ben is in there. Since his parents had been acting weird and he himself saw Janice’s bag in the house, he decided to look around - they never locked the basement door before - and found Janice all bloody and handcuffed. Actually nobody really hurt her physically, she did it to herself so that Harry would know it wouldn’t be easy because now her blood in everywhere and their house is known as her last appointment. She even hurt her head to make Harry believe that Mary hit her. Now Harry has locked Mary out of the house to protect her…he’s not even answering her calls. He sent her to get rid of Janice’s bag, computer and jacket, and finding her keys Mary decided to bring them to Janice’s house.
Now, Tucci’s role: he’s Grieff, on death row in America because he strangled his wife and hid her head. He’s a reknown criminologist with great mental abilities that from time to time solves cases, if they meet his requirements. He tells Beth, British journalist who knows Janice, that it’s about “moral values”, to do something good without publicity. Beth wants to write about him, wants to see him in action, and tries to entice him with the story of her dear friend Janice who disappeared.. but she doesn’t really know that Janice really disappeared, she only received a weird picture very much out of focus, the last thing before Harry ‘accidentally’ broke her phone, but then she agreed to never speak about it to witness his next case, and he keeps his word. It’s the case of a girl wanting to know what happened to her father who disappeared five years before , not knowing that her mother killed him, even though she loved him, we don’t know why. Still, Grieff works on janice's case too. He has lots of people on the outside working for him, so he has a woman, who commits burglary for a living, take Beth to Janice’s house. Therefore, Beth is there when Mary enters the house with the key and without a sound reason for being there. What’s more, Ben calls her. Ben already tried calling his father, asking for the truth, but of course Harry lied. Ben has realized that things changed after he gave Janice that usb key, he knows that much at least, so he tries his mother and she tells him about the children, so Ben understands what happened. When Ben lets out that he’s with Janice, Mary loses it, she repeatedly calls Harry who doesn’t answer then she runs out followed by Beth. Mary can only think of hurrying home to save Ben and wants Beth to leave her alone so she walks without looking and gets run over, killed, lots of blood on the street. We don’t see how but Beth hurries to her house. Grieff also tried another way: he sent people to Harry’s house, only for some reason he didn’t say the real reason. He had lots of people doing what he asked, and yet for this he decided to put on an elaborate scheme: he says that if they stop his execution he’ll reveal where he hid his wife’s head, he tells her father where it is, who apparently is something like a mafia boss, who sends some men. We are almost at the end.
Ben is losing his mind because of the poisoning, and he hits Janice with a hammer. Harry comes down to see if she’s dead and finds a delirious Ben. Harry starts saying again that he’ll take the blame for him, and Ben runs out only to stop and get sick. Beth runs to the house and it’ll take the investigative journalist a while to find the open door… she get downstairs in time to stop Harry who is about to kill Janice for good - in his mind, to protect Ben, for sure. Harry turns against her too, but here and now is when three men arrive expecting to dig out a woman’s head, while instead they save another woman’s life. Well, two now, with Beth.
Harry is, of course, arrested. Janice is still alive so he didn’t actually kill anybody, but still, it does not look good for him.
During the credits, Janice comes to talk to Grieff. It’s been two weeks - since his execution is only a week away now - and she’ all better. She ays she wants his help with her husband's murder, who is alive but doesn’t deserve to be.
When did that happen? She got married and regretted it in only two weeks? Or she was already but lied to everybody saying she wasn’t? Who knows, but if they’ll make a season two this is what it’ll have to be about.
Now, first of all I want to say that if it may be true that under the ‘right’ circumstances everybody can kill, I do not agree with Harry’s actions at all, and I mean from the start. It did not help Edgar to hide everything and cover for him. He was troubled and fragile, yes, so much that if you really wanted to help him you should have provided medical support, experts, mental help, he could not do it alone, it was too big, it was tearing him apart, and it was even cruel to just tell him to stop, as if it was that easy. People must stop thinking that mental problems will go away if you just stop thinking about it!
Also, the good vicar was not enough shocked at what Janice saw in those videos. She was right in being shocked, he should have been too, he should have gone to the police with her and explain everything and explain Edgar’s mental problems. Experts could have proven Edgar’s computer was used to download those videos and could have maybe followed those links to shut down those sites of horrors. Harry used them instead to download more!
It’s not really clear to me what did Janice have in mind. Well, the first injuries were a good idea, actually, it was a clear message: if I die, they’ll find lots of evidence here! But all the rest, hurting her head to make Harry believe Mary hurt her, give Harry her password so he could send an email to her sister to postpone their online meeting… what was her goal? And where did it lead?
Anyway, final words: the morale is that he may, perhaps, have had good intentions, but he went about it in a very wrong way; he ignored something awful but distant to him to try and help one boy that he knew personally; in spite of his words that he wanted to help Edgar, he never really tried, he only burdened him more.
He kept saying he wanted to protect his wife and son, and ended up in prison, with a dead wife and a seriously troubled son who’ll require serious therapy.
Anyway, mabe this is jsut my weird mind, lots of people can probably relate or understand his actions. I don’t, like panic. I don’t understand how people could trumple on each other to death, even walk over children’s bodies in the name of panic… and I don’t really want to, I refuse to.
I’m an Adhd woman and have to live with that.
By Steven Moffat.
It has David Tennant as Harry, Stanley Tucci as Grieff, Dolly Wells as Janice, Lindsey Marshal as Mary and Louis Oliver as Ben.
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