Culprits

I am honestly baffled as to what happened with this series. It started out so strong, with a compelling mystery and strong characters at its heart. Joe / David is phenomenal and his backstory compelling. The flashbacks of the heist were an excellent choice too, slowly piecing together what happened like a jigsaw puzzle.

Then from around the last half of episode 4 onwards, it's like the writers just headed out and they brought in the work experience B team to take over. Characters suddenly make ridiculous choices and act in stupid ways that completely defy who they were established to be at the start. Like David, who is shown to be assassin-level skilled, who then clumsily tries to hide away from the killer in a French farmhouse like he's a defenceless child. Also the killer incidently can't be killed either by an ACTUAL assassin (who can take out 10-15 private secrurity tacticians with ease, but not a skinny bro with a tracksuit and some fresh Reeboks) even with a full gun clip.

Oh and apparently you can find anyone anywhere in the world if you're skilled at using Facebook - even if they have gone off-grid to a snowy tundra in Germany. And others also in hiding will post pics of their signature artwork on Insta with clear landmark locations to help you out.

Also according to Culprits if you're black and approach fully in-use public storage lockers in a crowded London train station, the police will immediately single you out and treat you with suspicion.

Let's also not forget that stuffing a body into a car boot in the middle of a London Council estate will attract zero attention apart from the killer who will watch you from a high rise, while eating an apple. Because why not right?

We also have being shot in a fully white uniform, which is bad enough to literally cover a train bathroom in blood, but not enough to. Get it on your equally white trenchcoat, as that would arouse suspicion and concern, and not serve your silly plot. Oh and apparently the character literally 'didn't feel' it when it happened. You got SHOT in the stomach mate, get a grip.

Oh yeah and a suburban dad and his young kids ( the latter of whom also have no idea wtf is going on) can get away from a house full of trained killers in the middle of the night as long as they have David on the phone guiding them, getting them to hide behind doors and kitchen islands. Clearly the hitmen in this show needed a bit more training.

Lastly it just irked me that they did a bank job with silly half masks to look cool in promo shots, but that do zero to hide their identities. Like bro, you heard of balaclavas?

I really tried to love this and it started as an excellent 9/10, but it is honestly like the main writers took a vacation halfway through. As a writer by trade myself I can tell when new creatives have joined the fray, and in all seriousness I am convinced that others took over. That's the only way you can explain the baffling drop in quality.

Edit: I looked up the writers of each episode and actually episode 4 is when new writers joined the show's creator, and lead writer. So this explains it perfectly - the new writers clearly took over and diluted the quality.

Shame really.

Really enjoyed this series which had a good balance of back story building and present day action with the story flitting between the past and present while keeping the viewer in the dark as to who did what and who is double crossing who along with who is good and who is bad but the only thing that let it down was casting Eddie Izzard on a gangster type role as all I can see Eddie as is Tony P from The Mystery Men movie which I s a shame. But overall an entertaining watch which kept me intrigued to the end . The acting was good and kept me watching until the end . Some really good parts in particular with Nathan Stewart-Jarrett showing a good range in acting and why he will be a bigger star in the future.

It's pretty refreshing these days when you see characters in a thriller/drama acting rationally in intense situations. They don't make dumb choices, they take excessive measures and doesn't half ass anything.

This show is definitely not breaking any new grounds, but is very well executed and never feels boring or stagnant. Production is good, about on par with your typical British drama and all that entails.

Some really satisfying scenes early on, especially the one where main guy gets kidnapped but realizes it's not by the people he thought it was.

Overall, highly recommend for those that like British shows, and crime thrillers in general.

The naysayer who criticised the IMDb description of a comedy? You're quite right. A comedy, this ain't. But, and this is an important point, children, IMDb's idiocy isn't the show's fault. OK, this is a wonderful example of the heist/caper genre with all the usual twists and turns, characters and plot points - but done better than you've seen before. Characters are perfectly written and plot points are predictable but only after the event - I could have/should have seen that coming - but I didn't. This is an always engrossing and sometimes thrilling take on the genre which has been seriously underrated so far. I think I know why.

It's a decent watch, but only if you don't think too hard about the things that happen throughout it.

I'm only on episode 6, but already the things that have happened are far too unrealistic, if you were really to do a job like this, you'd have to have reconstructive surgery with the technology we have at our disposal today, David/Muscle only cuts an inch of his hair off, the rest are unchanged and are surprised they're getting found! That's is just one of MANY reasons not to take this series too seriously, so don't go into this thinking it's a hard core crime thriller, it's more in the realm of a light superhero scenario with the super powers being able to occur things they need as and when out of thin air almost.

But still enjoyable while you watch.