Recently got the chance to watch Ellis on Channel5 in the UK, series 1 consists of 3 episodes which concern a single case. DCI Ellis is parachuted in to help failing police investigations in the UK along with her newly found assistant DS Chet Harper, who originally doesn’t get on with her. I don’t want to give away too much as that would ruin the story, but it does develop nicely. The cast are decent, Sharon D. Clarke brings a determined steel to the stories and Andrew Gower starts off slow and grows as he gets the measure of how to work with his new boss. The other people all work well together and whilst it isn’t groundbreaking really, it moves along well. It isn’t explosive, don’t get me wrong, but you need to concentrate and watch to make sure you don’t miss the clues – my only gripe, small though it is, is that Ellis often makes extremely quick work of grasping the nitty gritty details that solve the cases meaning it can feel a tad hurried – but of course they need to fit a fair amount into the running time and it does mean that the whole story is all finished each episode, all 3 of which run to about 2 hours. Extra credit goes to Channel5 for having the episodes available to watch for free on Channel5.com and the ad count wasn’t too high when we watched either – probably because otherwise each episode would become pretty damn long!
Ellis
Channel5 produced crime/police drama starring Sharon D. Clarke and Andrew Gower.
Nicely done, not earth shattering but still well done. Develops nicely over season 1 but so far there has been no sign of any more episodes in the works, which is a shame as I believe it deserves more and works pretty well. Worse series’ have got a second chance so why not this!
Plus Points
Acting and stories are great
Main characters develop well
3 hr long episodes all hang together nicely
Bad Points
It is after all just another crime drama
We have seen something like this before
It can be a bit slow…
