Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

fiona_r_lamb I so wanted to like this. And I am so disappointed that I did not.And I didn't like the way the film was edited at all. For me it was too choppy, and lacked cohesion. The characters were all very unlikeable. Just did not work for me. It had promise, a good idea but it just was not fleshed out properly.Shirley Henderson used to be a good actress - what happened? The scene where she enters what she thinks is a brothel was just AWFUL.But most of all it just wasn't believable. For example - and MAJOR spoiler alert - the two men who assaulted Stephen, the gunman, and who provoked him into killing got away with it. The story should have revolved around their guilt and shame and even though the show touched upon it with the younger man trying to kill himself a year later, it was not nearly enough.The only good thing is it's 4 x 45 minutes long so not too drawn out.

brendanofarrell-14941 A bereft husband walks along the bank of a quiet river until he comes to his wife curled on the ground, crying for their deceased daughter. He doesn't run to his wife. Instead, he only picks up his pace slightly as he takes off his coat and puts it over her crumpled body. He helps her up and looks over the marsh as a gentle wind blows the reedy grasses haphazardly about. "I'll take you home," he says. "Okay? I'll take you home." The husband's gesture is rooted in futility and pain, beauty and kindness. As Thomas Wolfe once wrote, "You can never go home again." This is particularly true when you live in Southcliffe--a quaint but provincial town set in gloomy, fictional England. A lone gunman has gone on a killing spree, murdering a number of community members without ceremony or fanfare. One neighbor is working in her garden. There are no witness to her murder. Only a single bullet from afar. The husband and wife crying along the river bank are just two more of town's victim-survivors, grappling to come to terms with what's left of their life. The mass shooting and the murder of their daughter took place more than a year ago when the scene is presented. You can never go home again. This is how the four-part miniseries unwinds for its viewers. It is a slow and patient drama that jumps from past to present and back again. It is a masterpiece of pace and elliptical pauses. The acting is heart-wrenching and brilliant. The script soars with unadorned language in which some of the most vicious and touching lines unfold in the spaces between words.You can never go home again. For T.V. Journalist David Whithead (Rory Kinear), who has been sent back to his hometown to cover the unfolding tragedy, this statement means something entirely different. As a boy growing up in Southcliffe, he was routinely bullied by the townsfolk in the wake of his father's sudden and unexpected death. He knows Southcliffe to be a brutal and unforgiving place wrapped in the niceties of dishonesty and pretense. Yet, at the command of his manager, return he must. In the year that follows, we watch him--and several others in the community--struggle with the tragedy's psycho-emotional aftermath: Were the shootings really random? Did we, as a community, do something to deserve them? The husband's gesture to take his wife back to their home is beautiful and kind--not because things are going to be any better when they walk through the front door--but rather because the husband is committed to suffering eternally with his wife and the town of Southcliffe.

tr91 Southcliffe really did sound promising after all I had read about it. There were quite a few familiar faces, the set looked perfect for the storyline and the plot was good. Stephen Morton as Sean Harris was an extremely dark and mysterious character who eventually goes on a killing spree in Southcliffe, we then see how this affects the lives of others.My main problem with Southcliffe was it was just painfully slow, the killing spree did happen quite quickly but everything else was hard to follow, there was so many different people affected by this and it was hard to keep track of who was who, and it just seemed completely unrealistic. The acting wasn't that great, certainly not powerful enough to make me believe a loved one had just died. I got half way through the 3rd episode and I was getting bored, I just couldn't relate to the characters or feel any emotion because it was so unrealistic and slow paced and I just had to stop watching it. There was just no explanation as to why Stephen Morton had just gone on a killing spree. Overall I was disappointed with the series but I can see why people would enjoy it, it was dark and there was tension. It did have all the makings for a great TV mini-series but maybe it just wasn't for me. I haven't given it a rating because I didn't manage to watch it in full.

Alex Heaton (azanti0029) The first part of this was shown last night, and directed with a steady hand and unravelling at its own pace, its clearly a drama that's not going to be rushed.The writers have taken the real events of Hungerford, Cumbria and Dunblane as their inspiration here, showing the characters and the sparks that lead up to one man (Sean Harris, brilliantly haunting) snapping and begin his random killing spree in a small fictional town in the UK. The tones here match the bleak morning fog of this sleepy coastal community and the camera takes it's time, not always showing you everything you want to see, a statement perhaps that the film makers here are willing to take risks and its all the better for it. Clearly taking well grounded advice from shows such as 'The Killing' time is taken to show all sides of a person so there will be more emotional consequence for the viewer later on as the first episode ended with the spree just beginning, though we were given a taste of this already at the start.It's style won't be to everyone's taste and I am sure some will find it a bit slow, but in a time of never ending crap reality TV and repetitive game shows, its about time someone showed some balls and made these sorts of gritty dramas that we used to be so good at. It gets my vote and I look forward to seeing more tonight.