Grace (TV Series) Dead Like You (2023) User Reviews

Murky and macabre, great start to series 3.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 19 March 2023]

Back in 2012, Sergeant Grace was on the case investigating Operation Moonfall, where The Brighton Prowler is attacking women, and stealing their lipsticks, fast forward a decade, and he seems to be back in business.

Talk about back with a bang, this show goes from strength to strength, and seems to improve with every single episode, I thought this was excellent. Fast paced, thrilling, gritty, a little twisted,

One point I would make, is that some may be a little upset ore watershed with some of the content, this is the most dark and bleak show since ......series two of Grace, so the advice is to approach with caution of you're sensitive, it's very different to the almost genteel killings at Oxford in Endeavour.

DS Norman continues to be quite something, I don't know what it is about Craig Parkinson, but he always seems as though bed up to no good, he was really good.

It looks like the end for Rakie Ayola's ACC Alison Vosper, and that's a shame, she always adds a touch of class, if you've not seen the second series of The Pact, I'd recommend it.

Loved the visuals once again, Brighton looks great.

9/10.

Dead like you

[coltras35 · 6/10 · 19 March 2023]

A chilling event at the Royal Edward hotel on the night of Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper's leaving do forces Grace and Branson into a difficult position. They must investigate all guests, including high ranking East Sussex police attendees. Something about the incident is causing a deep unease in Grace - he knows he's seen this before. Has a sinister offender from the crime buster's past resurfaced or is this a copycat?

I didn't think I would enjoy this as I normally prefer light mystery than police procedural with sleazy and dark undertones, but I was hooked by the mystery of the masked attacker and the pace is very fast, and that even to its detriment as I was left a bit confused with so much twists. The dialogue can be dullish at times. It can also get complicated, but it's engaging enough. There's a few creepy suspects such as a taxi driver who also works in a fun ride.

Dead Like You

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 2 April 2023]

A woman is sexually assaulted at the hotel where DSI Roy Grace's boss, ACC Alison Vosper is saying her goodbyes and introduces her successor, ACC Cassian Pewe.

The particulars of the assaults reminds Grace of similar crimes that took place in 2012. Despite extensive investigations, the rapist was never found.

Grace was unhappy how the 2012 investigation was conducted. Especially the casual sexism and the disregard of the victims. Grace also thinks that one victim was probably murdered.

In the present day, the police investigation leads them to a creepy taxi driver, a former school bully who runs a modelling agency and possibly a high ranking police officer.

This was a dark story, very creepy given how the rapist operated. The ending was too pat, especially as how the other shady suspects were dealt with by the police.

The taxi driver was so sleazy, he could had been arrested given all the bad reviews he got. There was no need for DS Potting to give him stern words.

The actual pursuit of the rapist was weird. When they went to his centre of operations, there was no other employees there. Was he a one man band with lucrative citywide contracts?

How convenient he had all those locations handily on various screens so Grace and Branson could follow his movements.

Even more convenient he carried a latex suit and a toy with him just in case he relapsed!

Not a great start to season 3... bad script

[Design88 · 5/10 · 20 March 2023]

I had been anxiously awaiting the new season of GRACE but was thoroughly disappointed by it this evening. The story in the script was poorly conceived, constructed, implausible and lacked lustre. Grace was very quiet and actually rather boring throughout and his overbearing partner moving in with him on the strength of just having seen his wife kissing someone was ludicrous and implausible. Practically everything in this first episode was implausible. Perhaps the reason that John seemed to be just 'phoning in his performance', was because he recognized how bad the script was too.

The whole episode and even the cinematography felt dated and the writing was not up to the standard I expected.

Ironically, the episode kept flashing back to 2012 and a series of rapes which had eluded Grace and his team under the supervision of an overly objectionable boss, but this episode in its execution felt a lot more period than that.

Even though the intention was to show how dreadful a boss he had been, it was just too much. There's laziness and sloppiness but his response was OTT. Grace had damning potential evidence that suggested a link between a missing person and the rape victims. For him to dismiss it out of hand and not even consider looking for the missing girl at all didn't make any sense.

The fact that there is a blatantly, too obvious red herring storyline that just becomes a coincidental subplot is a bit too much to accept. And the police dealings with him at the end of the episode are highly unlikely and just silly.

There's also another unlikely suspect from within the force served up to us on a platter but that leads nowhere. He had been a thorn in Grace's side at the time of his wife's disappearance but there's no reason to suggest he might have played a role in obscuring the identity of the rapist or in hindering his arrest.

But one of the most annoying problem for me was the age of the protagonists. Since the rapes had happened ten years earlier, the age of the rapist seemed all wrong. It also seemed highly improbable he would have shown up at a 10yr reunion with the horrendously abusive kids 5yrs older than him, just to show off how much of a success he had now become. Maybe I am the only one to have difficulty figuring this out? Perhaps I'm just getting old and the actor seemed too young?

The fact that he had frightened and controlled a girl enough to have her act as his accomplish 10 years earlier seemed implausible. More so that he successfully stopped raping just because she'd begged him to after the murder of his last victim. Then, the fact that the overacted, cringeworthy high school bullying behaviour by the lads at the reunion triggers him to start raping again beggars belief.

It also makes absolutely no sense that he'd walk into the police station to report his abuser but that didn't stop his renewed desire to abduct and rape. Nor did his girlfriend seem to care either. He even had the same white van after 10yrs but, with his new connections, could rape them in their own homes it seems. None of that made any sense either.

I felt embarrassed for John Simm to have to convey the 'lightbulb moment' when he realizes the Security camera company is at the heart of the rapes. Hard even for him to act out such a bad script. Again, it may just be me, but I couldn't see how they found the bank of monitors, got access, and how those monitors were supposed to have helped the rapist. Luckily, they just happen to see the latest attack (like the luck of spotting the accomplice following a previous victim on CCTV) so off they go to intercept. Unlike before, the rapist decides to drag his victim to the chute still alive giving Grace and team enough time to rescue her. The rapist conveniently killing himself saves the need to explain his motivation and execution. Grace seemed rather too kind and accommodating to the accomplice. She was still an accessory to murder and rape and perverting the course of justice. It was hard for me to believe she'd been a victim.

The previously interesting subplot surrounding Grace's wife's disappearance was also very disappointing. Season 2 had ended with such a great cliffhanger but the result was anti-climactic in this first episode. The end scene of her in some sort of retreat, reading, tearing out, and burning Grace's announcement in the German newspaper was so heavily handed and childish it was reminiscent of a scene from an episode of Poirot or Midsommer Murders. Why not just burn the whole paper if not to leave a clue later from the gap left behind on the torn out page?

Since I've written all this I've removed another star from my rating. I hadn't appreciated just how badly written it was because of my enjoyment of the previous two seasons.