I love so many of the actors in this show...Rebecca Front, Adrian Bower, Ashley Jensen...but I was so disappointed. The main character performs marriages but doesn't deem it important for her to marry the father of her 15 year old daughter. Of course she never married the father of her 17 year old son but marriage in Europe really seems an afterthought now so that is not too surprising. Except that she marries people for a living. And of course this being 2017 we have to have a brave transgender character. Never mind that he is a married man with two sons. We are to feel sorry for him, not his wife and sons and of course the writers make sure to remind us where our sympathies lie. Obviously his family isn't "woke". But Kate (Ashley Jensen) is. She is also unfaithful to her partner but hey, they aren't married so that's okay. The villain in all this is Judy (Rebecca Front). Because she doesn't think a man should come to work dressed as a woman and she has the dirt on Kate's infidelity. I mean she is so intolerant, right? Makes sense she isn't running the department. She isn't "woke" either. Of course there is an immigration fraud subplot which might be interesting if they actually rescue the girls who are obviously being trafficked for nefarious purposes but we need to focus on the messy lives of the main characters. I guess I just couldn't really figure out what the purpose of this show was. Is it a soap opera about messy office lives? Or are the people in the Registrar's office doing important work? Of course, as is typical of BBC shows the home life is messy and the kids are always acting up but the writers never stop to think that maybe the kids are so miserable because the parents are always so busy with their own lives. The daughter is sick and Kate wants her partner (who is a police office investigation a murder) to pick her up because she is busy with important records work. Granted it is a very touching scene with a dying woman realizing she wants to marry the father of her child, but the marriage has been performed and it is just tying up loose ends that her co-worker/illicit lover can finish up. If you can't put your sick child before your job then don't be surprised that your kids do things to try and get some attention. I enjoyed the series "Blue Murder" but whenever the series dealt with Janine's kids' home life and their anger and feelings of neglect I wanted to scream at her "your kids need you to spend time with them and listen to them and put them first, not your job" but at least she was solving a murder. I feel like Kate's job isn't so important that she can't arrange her schedule to actually spend some time with her kids instead of reacting when they act up because they need some attention and acting shocked that they don't feel they can confide in her. But hey, maybe I'm just not "woke".
Review of Love, Lies and Records
