This was one the best series on Netflix for 3 seasons, with consistently excellent story lines striking the right balance between serious themes and fantastic humour. Throughout those series the mostly young and, until then unknown, cast were superbly supported by a smattering of more familiar older faces. Gillian Anderson being a particular standout as a star turn.
The premise was original and allowed many opportunities for humorous episodes, while subtly introducing otherwise taboo themes into mainstream TV. It came as no surprise that the themes of sexual identity became a big talking point as the series treated them as perfectly normal and thereby giving a 'voice' to previously unrepresented groups, and doing it with a smile.
In the long run that desire to represent minority groups became a millstone around the writers necks in Season 4. Season four is still good but falls short of the excellence of the first three seasons. Characters were introduced that we the viewers had no connection to, and seemed to be there to cross a few more groups off the checklist. Consequently, not enough time was given to wrap up the story lines of the remaining characters we did care about, and resulted in a headlong rush over a cliff to bring each to some sort of conclusion.
Spoiler alert: None of the relationships come to a definite and absolute conclusion with the viewer left with enough clues as to how their lives will progress. That isn't the issue and the writers should be applauded for not taking the easy way out as would happen in a romcom. It's more that an opportunity to explore those relationships and how they were resolved/unresolved/partially resolved in more detail was missed. It gives a feel of a slightly unstructured final series and last episode in particular. By this time we really cared about Otis, Maeve, Aimee, Eric, Jean, Jackson and Ruby and we deserved more from them than shoe horning in half a dozen new characters. I will make an exception of the radio station chief who offered a few fun cameo scenes with Jean.
We lost a handful of other great characters from the first three series without any knowledge of what happened to them, with some brief mentions or appearances for a few. The worst part though is the new school felt unrealistic in so many ways, the main one being that it gave the impression that every pupil with the exception of series regulars was somehow within the LBGTQ+ community. I don't have any problem with that representation but with the proportionality of it in this series. It was handled well in S1-3 but in S4 they seemed to forget that straight people are still the majority making the final series seem preachy in a way that was skilfully avoided before that.
Despite the shortcomings, Season 4 still has plenty of great scenes and a regular smattering of laugh out loud moments. But by the standards of what went before I couldn't help but feel disappointed with it.
However, taking all four series together as a whole S1-3 are 10/10 but S4 is 7/10. Still very good just not as good.
It is just another reminder that when you hit on a great idea the trick is avoid going on too long. They just about managed to hold on with this and I'm glad that it is ending while we can still remember it with affection.
The premise was original and allowed many opportunities for humorous episodes, while subtly introducing otherwise taboo themes into mainstream TV. It came as no surprise that the themes of sexual identity became a big talking point as the series treated them as perfectly normal and thereby giving a 'voice' to previously unrepresented groups, and doing it with a smile.
In the long run that desire to represent minority groups became a millstone around the writers necks in Season 4. Season four is still good but falls short of the excellence of the first three seasons. Characters were introduced that we the viewers had no connection to, and seemed to be there to cross a few more groups off the checklist. Consequently, not enough time was given to wrap up the story lines of the remaining characters we did care about, and resulted in a headlong rush over a cliff to bring each to some sort of conclusion.
Spoiler alert: None of the relationships come to a definite and absolute conclusion with the viewer left with enough clues as to how their lives will progress. That isn't the issue and the writers should be applauded for not taking the easy way out as would happen in a romcom. It's more that an opportunity to explore those relationships and how they were resolved/unresolved/partially resolved in more detail was missed. It gives a feel of a slightly unstructured final series and last episode in particular. By this time we really cared about Otis, Maeve, Aimee, Eric, Jean, Jackson and Ruby and we deserved more from them than shoe horning in half a dozen new characters. I will make an exception of the radio station chief who offered a few fun cameo scenes with Jean.
We lost a handful of other great characters from the first three series without any knowledge of what happened to them, with some brief mentions or appearances for a few. The worst part though is the new school felt unrealistic in so many ways, the main one being that it gave the impression that every pupil with the exception of series regulars was somehow within the LBGTQ+ community. I don't have any problem with that representation but with the proportionality of it in this series. It was handled well in S1-3 but in S4 they seemed to forget that straight people are still the majority making the final series seem preachy in a way that was skilfully avoided before that.
Despite the shortcomings, Season 4 still has plenty of great scenes and a regular smattering of laugh out loud moments. But by the standards of what went before I couldn't help but feel disappointed with it.
However, taking all four series together as a whole S1-3 are 10/10 but S4 is 7/10. Still very good just not as good.
It is just another reminder that when you hit on a great idea the trick is avoid going on too long. They just about managed to hold on with this and I'm glad that it is ending while we can still remember it with affection.