I remember a BBC series back in the Seventies called "Warship", and despite being made on a low budget and suffering from some theatrical over-acting, the stories were pretty gripping. You really got a sense of what serving on board a warship must be like.
So when I tuned in for "Making Waves" I was hoping for similar excitement - but what a disappointment. The first problem was that I could hardly understand what the characters were saying. Most of them had very strong geordie, scots or scouse accents, and while this may well be true-to-life it didn't aid communication with anyone not born in those parts. Added to this was a lot of music thumping away while people were talking. And if you can't understand what characters are saying, how can you care what happens to them? I got the distinct impression that the first episode was in fact two episodes that had been knitted together, so frantic and ill-explained was the action. I simply couldn't follow what the characters were doing or why, or why anything happened.
The series was performing so poorly for ITV that it was yanked after three episodes.
So when I tuned in for "Making Waves" I was hoping for similar excitement - but what a disappointment. The first problem was that I could hardly understand what the characters were saying. Most of them had very strong geordie, scots or scouse accents, and while this may well be true-to-life it didn't aid communication with anyone not born in those parts. Added to this was a lot of music thumping away while people were talking. And if you can't understand what characters are saying, how can you care what happens to them? I got the distinct impression that the first episode was in fact two episodes that had been knitted together, so frantic and ill-explained was the action. I simply couldn't follow what the characters were doing or why, or why anything happened.
The series was performing so poorly for ITV that it was yanked after three episodes.