sagar-43860 "Winter" is an odd one - the cinematography shows occasional spots of brilliance, but is, mostly, simple and functional; the acting is on the spot, with each actor playing their characters efficiently, not missing a beat; the direction is crisp, and so is the editing; this is one of those shows where everything except the plot is good.Twists abound in the end, and the finale is one to be watched, because it is just so good. However, the red herrings thrown in here and there were never convincing enough - the ideal red-herring is one that is well-justified, but not for the reason we think it to be, and masks the hints that foreshadow the real fact; in this case, though, there are no hints whatsoever to be masked, and some reveals are just like "Uh huh. Ok." instead of "How did I not see that coming??"In addition, the characters are actually nothing so special. Take Castle. Castle himself is quirky, has a sense of humor, loves adventures, and is basically a big kid. But he also has the ability to show pathos towards his fellow investigators and has good observation skills, which make sense given his novelist background.Consider House, M.D. He's sarcastic, caustic, permanently ticked-off, insulting, brash, ingenious, playful (to the extent of causing harm) but committed to his work as a doctor. Now consider Eve Winter. Nothing special, just the typical cop with a haunting past, who is trying to do justice by the victims who keep her work coming. Nothing to write home about. Consider the Fed, Jake. He just wants a confession and keeps getting into loggerheads with Winter. Nothing special there, either. The only one with a hint of personality is Indiana herself, and thank God for that, because otherwise the entire cast could be replaced by everymen and the story wouldn't change much.Regardless, I'm giving this an 8/10 for an overall solid show. Good entertainment, but don't expect to be hooked until the penultimate episode.

puppen There are so many clichés in this series that its main value might be as a drinking game: hooker with a heart of gold (have a drink), professional conduct hearing as a means to derail the investigation (have another drink), bickering detectives who are actually hot for each other (drink), person killed because he/she is wearing another person's clothing (drink), staged press conference to bring out the killer (drink), vital information leaked to the press due to pillow talk (drink), etc. I am not mentioning the clichés that give away major plot points (and there are many more), but you get the idea. It really is as if the writers intentionally tried in insert as many overused police procedural tropes as they could into one script.The problem is that the acting is uniformly excellent. I cannot single out one performance because from the leads to the smallest part, the acting is top notch. It really is a shame that the actors did not have a better script with which to work.

qui_j This is a TV series that goes all over the place with its story line. There are so many subplots that are loosely held together that its difficult to know what the main focus of the series was all about. Everyone has a secret, everyone is a suspect is something or another, and at the end, everyone lives happily ever after. The scenes jump around due to poor editing, and sometimes appear in a random order. In the last episode it was as if there was a lot of pressure to wrap things up quickly, so problems were quickly solved, and an all too predictable end finally reached. The acting comes across as very "tongue-in-cheek", almost as if the actors really didn't believe the words they were saying. This may just have been due to a poor script, or their desire to get to the end of the story and move on to something else. There are some really good Australian productions. This is just not one of them!

pensman I doubt if I (we) will finish this series. We watched the pilot and all we did was a back and forth on how incompetent the cops were. But the series is on Acorn, so we said let's see if we do a binge watch to find out if the writers get better.They didn't. These cops don't jump to conclusions; they take running leaps.  Detective Sergeant Eve Winter tries to run a serious investigation but Detective Inspector Lachlan McKenzie (Peter O'Brien) decides he has the killer of Karly Johansson, Paul Paget whose wife was murdered eight years earlier; and McKenzie is adamant that Paget did it. McKenzie threatens him, follows him, and decides his Javert made Paget take his own life. But Paget was murdered. Rats, wrong again.Next McKenzie decides Johansson's husband Luke did it. Nope, wrong again. Luke is just a hapless drug dealer. And the Australian feds are involved as Federal Agent Jake Harris is trying to tie up a drug case using Indiana Hope as a witness. But someone is trying to kill Indiana and she tries to hide by having her friend Sharni help her. Then there is the big twist: Indiana Hope isn't Indiana Hope but Hope Ziegler the daughter of Peter Ziegler, the Director of Public Prosecutions. And Peter dumped his daughter off to be raised by another family as she was always getting into trouble and embarrassing him. Winter decides there is a leak in her task force and unless she finds out who, Indiana will be killed. And when Detective Inspector Lachlan McKenzie is shot, she knows she is right. This is where I gave up and went to bed. My wife finished it but won't watch a second series should one be approved. She says the cops are so incompetent that they make her cringe. She will admit that she likes Detective Alesia Taylor; but that is it. There is also a subplot involving Eve Winter's nephew Harry Winter who is a bit of a 14 year old idiot, and Eve's sister Melanie Winter who is a bit of a you are always picking on me for being a bad mother; which she is.