The Tunnel (TV Series) Episode #2.6 (2016) User Reviews

The Tunnel focuses on its endgame with a fast paced episode

[ryanjmorris · 9/10 · 18 May 2016]

After a slower and more thoughtful episode last week, The Tunnel came back all guns blazing tonight with an episode that covered a monumental amount of plot but still managed to spend some thoughtful time with its lead characters. Seeing Elise and Eryka's friendship develop has been interesting so far, but watching that friendship show signs of something more was an unexpected turn. Elise is a character who seriously doesn't know what she wants, but rather than have her sit down and talk through how she feels with dull exposition, the show succeeds in simply showing us her difficulties and confusion. Elise is already the show's most interesting character, but this is just strengthening her even more.

We also got the reveal tonight that Vanessa Hamilton is an Mi5 informant, which brings two of the separate plots of the series together in a brilliantly exciting way. It'll be great to see where that heads next week as the show starts to wrap the season up. The most ground covered tonight, though, lay with Robert Fournier and Koba, who we finally got to see properly in episode six. The brief car chase sequence was thrilling, culminating in a perfectly executed collision, boasting some seriously impressive editing and cinematography. Watching the life slowly drain out of Robert's face was a horrific sequence, and the final shot of his dead bodied displayed in the car park was truly terrifying.

This was the first episode of the season in which I felt like the show was beginning to show signs of everything coming together. The show was so fast paced in its opening half that it didn't have time to bring plot threads together, but now that it is, the show is all the more exciting. Next week the penultimate episode will leave everything in the balance for a hopefully thrilling finale to what has proved to be an excellent sophomore season.

Grade: A-

Convoluted and contrived; I couldn't tell you what is going on in this plotline

[richiehodev · 4/10 · 25 November 2022]

Six of eight episodes in for this series, and I couldn't tell you how this plotline and characters fit together. With each episode, viewers are seemingly treated to the unveiling of one antagonist after another, all exhibiting grandiose plans of being an evil mastermind and saying nefariously cheesy things like "this is just the beginning" or "you'll never going to catch me". But it seems like the writers never took a step back to think through what their motives are for doing what they do. It's worse when there are numerous of these baddies, all seemingly doing things in concert with each other, and all seemingly must have their own reasons for them to be part of the bigger crime, but you would be hard pressed to figure out who these people are beyond just characters who come and go on the screen.

Instead, the writers spend time to do a lot of grandstanding to inject a whole mishmash of topics such as anarchy, Neo-Nazism, race relations, all of which by this point amount to a whole bunch of convolution and contrivances. There just isn't any coherence to this story whatsoever.

The only time where I am "holding on to my seat" is bracing myself to make it through any scene that doesn't have Stephen Dillane in it. At this point, I'm not sure I can make it to the end of S2, much less start on S3.

Truly and utterly disappointed.