Landscapers (2021)

Watchseries; Gripping from the start to the end. Leaves you wanting much, much more.

All actors are perfect for their roles and the director took a totally new spin for a mini series.

Don't miss this.

Gripping from the start to the end. Leaves you wanting much, much more.

All actors are perfect for their roles and the director took a totally new spin for a mini series.

Don't miss this.

Landscapers watchseries. That's really intriguing and rare show, so different in a good way. It hooked me up from the beginning. Geniously shot, told and acted!

P.s. Should we sign the petition to give Olivia Colman an Oscar finally?!

Enjoyed the first installment. I can see this series is going to highlight Olivia Colman's acting range. We've seen her scratch the surface in ep. 1. I found her performances is the reason to watch. As an American, the story is relatively tame, but knowing what is to come and having Olivia deliver it, worth the watch...

We start with the director giving his cues to the effects dept and extras, a character starts to run through the rain... And the tone is set. Wonderfully original directing leads us to two superb actors (Olivia Coleman & David Thewlis) that 'just are' their characters, Susan & Christopher Edwards. A middle aged couple entirely in love with each other, yet very traditional, and hiding, their general drabness is certainly excellent camouflage.

Susan is depicted as part living in a fantasy world based on her love of cinema, especially old westerns. Christopher is the doting husband desperately seeking a job in a land where the language defeats him with his painfully bad job interviews.

There are so many different styles used, however they blend into each other seamlessly. Some of the lighting techniques/tricks are straight out of the theatre and early colour film. Yet they really do work in this mix of old/new. Dropping characters into strange locations to deliver monologues through the fourth wall was very effective. A lot of the credit has to go to the visual editor, Elen Pierce Lewis, who must have many a headache during the cutting.

Then we meet the detectives that receive a tip off. One smart, one stupid and one a sweary, aggressive, sexist bully that regularly loses it with fits of rage, and he's also the boss. I don't think we're meant to like him, I certainly don't. What would now be described as 'an old school copper'.

The end credits are also worth a watch, a real mixture of the real and the imaginary. You'll see an original photo of the Edwards, and then a shot of the crew striking (dismantling) a set, plus other stuff that's meant to be against 'the rules' of directing, but in this case just aren't.

The original soundtrack borrows heavily from past epics, Hitchcock would love some of the tension created by it.

Now, here's a caveat, I've only watched one episode so far. If the next three ep's are as good I'll revise this from a 9/10 to a 10/10. It's that good.

The master of his craft, exec producer and director is Will Sharpe. Watch out Chris Nolan, this dude is inevitably coming to Hollywood.

UPDATE - All 4 episodes watched. The directing gets even more quirky, the lines between fact and fiction more blurred until by ep' 3 we get to see all of the sets and the workings of film making 'full frontal'.

Are they guilty? There is no definitive answer, but I reckon so. Shame really. Susan is obviously a compulsive liar, Chris is obviously a bit of a mug. But Susan's parents were undoubtedly bad, even evil. Karma? Karma would be that they get out soon. They've been punished enough.

Upon first hearing of Landscapers and that it is based on a true crime starring Olivia Colman and David Thewlis I was thrilled, I couldn't wait to watch it.

A confirmation of how good the mini-series really is came from a talk show host whom I adore and thoroughly trust his judgement. He said..."It is sooo good, it is really good, it is genius...the way this is told is so brilliant". Then Olivia Colman, who was on the show, went on to say the writer is her husband and "he thought it was a bit too black & white and he wanted to tell the story from an empathetic point of view and I think he has done an amazing job". Well...to each their own.

It was horrible. Taking into consideration that it is based on a true crime I believe it should have been a bit more realistic. I watched the 1st episode two times, thinking I was missing something, and cannot watch anymore. I would have preferred the black & white version the writer didn't like. The British always do everything so well but this felt as if it was infused with Hollyweird. The sound along with the film presentation at times made me feel as if I was watching a cartoon. I know no more of the couple who committed the crime, or the crime itself, than I did before I watched Landscapers.

The first episode is really great. Thewlis and Colman is two of my favourites and the story, the directing and the cinematography was interestingly odd and fun. The only thing i disliked was that dreadful out of focus/bokeh lens in some scenes that some filmmakers unfortunately likes to use for some reason. (Please stop using it. It's terrible and distracting.)

I would rate the first episode 8 or a 9, but unfortunately the show takes a pretty drastic dive after that. The truth probably is that the story isn't interesting enough for 4 episodes and it should've probably been better as a movie and all the interesting creativity was spent on the first episode.