Keeping Faith

It's a sad science, working out when and why you give up on a TV series. Keeping Faith looked promising for a while - ravishing settings, camera lingering lovingly on Eve Myles while music played, a steady arc of disintegration carefully outlined...but the simple things were missing, like common sense and plausibility. The police stuff, the child care stuff is deeply unconvincing, and we've seen these things done well so many times that it really shows. Faith's talent as a lawyer seems to consist of looking smart and talking earnestly, which results in some totally incredible courtroom triumphs. she does, of course, cock things up, and one episode finishes with a client's treasured garden totally vandalised, mainly because of her cocky confidence in her own infallibility. "I'm sorry", she intones, "I'm so, so sorry." But in the next episode we don't go back again, to see how bad the damage is. We move on to the next climax, the next crisis for Faith, because she's the only thing the writers think or care about.

Tonight was the parting of the ways. Faith has a crucial hearing in the afternoon, when she might lose her children. She needs character witnesses, so we watch her work through three possibilities, each of which turns her down. Harrowing stuff. But this is on the morning of the actual hearing. Even if they wanted to testify for her, there;'s no way that they'd be available. It's just total nonsense, start to finish. some nice moments, but not enough.