Over-written, over-contrived, overacted and over-wrought, this would-be realistic drama fell over itself at every turn. It started out as a whodunit concerning the disappearance and as it turns out death of a young girl of African origin, the Kiri of the title. Brought up in foster care by a middle class white family, she's encouraged by an experienced care worker to meet up with her black father at her grandparents when things go wrong.
I suppose when see you names like Sarah Lancashire and Steven MacKintosh in the credits you know it's not going be a straightforward mystery and you can bet there'll be a fair bit of scenery - chewing actory moments for the so-serious cast to get their teeth into and sure enough there are bite marks everywhere as they each gets scenes of doubt, confusion, anger and despair to try to impress the BAFTA judges.
I wasn't impressed at all. The characters didn't ever sound like "ordinary everyday folk" caught up in a tragedy, with all sorts of unnatural conversations going on amongst them pretty much all the time. Plus, there are scenes of embarrassing weirdness none more so than when the troubled teenager son of the foster family confronts his mother over her affair with the school janitor where she works by walking in on her having a shower and having his tete-a-tete with her standing dripping naked in front of him. Later he has a strange, metaphysical conversation with Lancashire's hard-working, working-class care worker whose original encouragement of the meeting between natural father and daughter precipitated the tragedy before his big underwhelming confrontation with his own dad, MacKintosh.
Throw in an unsatisfactory miscarriage-of-justice ending and there really was very little to commend this mini-series. I came away not liking anyone in the whole four - part series apart from the doomed little girl and she was hardly in it anyway.
This much-hyped programme proved to be a real let-down and is one box-set best left on the shelf, in my opinion.
I suppose when see you names like Sarah Lancashire and Steven MacKintosh in the credits you know it's not going be a straightforward mystery and you can bet there'll be a fair bit of scenery - chewing actory moments for the so-serious cast to get their teeth into and sure enough there are bite marks everywhere as they each gets scenes of doubt, confusion, anger and despair to try to impress the BAFTA judges.
I wasn't impressed at all. The characters didn't ever sound like "ordinary everyday folk" caught up in a tragedy, with all sorts of unnatural conversations going on amongst them pretty much all the time. Plus, there are scenes of embarrassing weirdness none more so than when the troubled teenager son of the foster family confronts his mother over her affair with the school janitor where she works by walking in on her having a shower and having his tete-a-tete with her standing dripping naked in front of him. Later he has a strange, metaphysical conversation with Lancashire's hard-working, working-class care worker whose original encouragement of the meeting between natural father and daughter precipitated the tragedy before his big underwhelming confrontation with his own dad, MacKintosh.
Throw in an unsatisfactory miscarriage-of-justice ending and there really was very little to commend this mini-series. I came away not liking anyone in the whole four - part series apart from the doomed little girl and she was hardly in it anyway.
This much-hyped programme proved to be a real let-down and is one box-set best left on the shelf, in my opinion.