“It examines human relationships and behaviour pretty well, but I just wish there had been more wit”

Summerwater

Summerwater, Channel 4

“Although it improves slightly as the series goes on, once viewers who are generous enough to stick around have got used to its bewildering tone, Summerwater reveals all its flaws in this opening episode. The central problem is that it can’t replicate the detailed inner monologues that were the book’s main selling point, and it doesn’t know what to offer instead. It lands on a sort of allusive psychodrama, with a lot of baleful blank stares and shots of Scottish trees and water looking indefinably threatening, all set to a shimmering whine of a score.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Maybe I was in a bad mood when I watched it, but I found that episode one dragged at the pace of a geriatric snail and in normal circumstances I wouldn’t have ploughed on to the end. But I will say the dialogue is good, not clunkingly expositional, making the viewer read between the lines. It examines human relationships and behaviour pretty well, but I just wish there had been more wit. Because while it is well acted, this is not a drama which will lift your spirits.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Imagine the most miserable British holiday, stuck in a gloomy log cabin in the middle of nowhere, in weather so bad that nobody wants to go outside. The kids are squabbling. Your marriage is in trouble. The residents of a neighbouring cabin have drunken parties every night with banging music that keeps you awake. And now ask yourself: why would you want to sit through a TV drama that dumps you in the middle of all that? Welcome to Summerwater.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

Wild Cherry, BBC1

“There are signs along the way that Wild Cherry wants to be working out big questions – it gestures at the intersection between race and class prejudice, and it aims to criticise the privilege money buys while it salivates over its material trappings – but it would have done better either to commit to that or to developing a proper rich froth that would put it firmly into the escapist nonsense category. As it is, it remains just fun enough for the run.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

 

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