From the moment the CD recording of a SAW-style voice is heard on screen, solemnly informing the confused listener that she has a task ahead of her you know this is going to be a familiar type of thriller. And, indeed, everything that follows is entirely predictable and poorly written, with big chunks of exposition regularly dropped into the storyline.
Take, for instance, Beesley's line "I've only known you a year". There's no discernible reason somebody in real life would tell their wife/girlfriend this to their face, as it's unsaid knowledge. But THE RECKONING is full of such heavy-handed explanatory lines.
It's a two-part drama commissioned by ITV and one of their lesser efforts. Ashley Jensen, hot from her success in America, is cast in the lead role but struggles with the emoting required. She's full of strangulated noises and expressions of mock horror straight out of acting school. Beesley is better, but appears to be sleepwalking through a character whose motivations never ring true.
The plotting is the worst aspect, and although the pacing picks up in the second half the logic and editing fall apart. And I can't help finding it slightly distasteful that they fall back on the old cliché of a kid with a brain tumour to garner audience sympathy. One to miss.
Take, for instance, Beesley's line "I've only known you a year". There's no discernible reason somebody in real life would tell their wife/girlfriend this to their face, as it's unsaid knowledge. But THE RECKONING is full of such heavy-handed explanatory lines.
It's a two-part drama commissioned by ITV and one of their lesser efforts. Ashley Jensen, hot from her success in America, is cast in the lead role but struggles with the emoting required. She's full of strangulated noises and expressions of mock horror straight out of acting school. Beesley is better, but appears to be sleepwalking through a character whose motivations never ring true.
The plotting is the worst aspect, and although the pacing picks up in the second half the logic and editing fall apart. And I can't help finding it slightly distasteful that they fall back on the old cliché of a kid with a brain tumour to garner audience sympathy. One to miss.