TV Review: Keeping Faith (BBC One)

TITLE: Keeping Faith

GENRE: Melodrama



YEAR: 2017

RATING: I can’t even…

WHERE CAN I SEE IT? You shouldn’t. But if you absolutely must waste your time, the tripe is showing on Acorn.

Tell me. Really. Someone tell me who greenlit Keeping Faith? Because it is godawful and, short of having someone flogged with a wet noodle, I want to make sure I never watch anything by anyone involved with this snoozefest ever again.

Matthew Hall. You stand this up. You should be ashamed of yourself. There’s gotta be nepotism involved to get something so slow and devoid of plot or mystery on the air.

My other guess as to why Keeping Faith made it to air is that it points to a bad habit the BBC and ITV have of putting certain actor under contract and then having to stick them into anything that comes along (e.g. James Nesbitt, John Simm, Olivia Colman). I have a fondness for Eve Myles and her front-tooth gap from her turn as Gwen in Torchwood. In the case of Keeping Faith, she’s good actor saddled with a shite script.

Here’s the plot: Eve gets up hungover as she does most mornings it would seem. As we’ll learn, she drinks a lot of wine. Edgy. Her bland guilty looking husband is already up feeding their three kids. The thing that keeps the youngest, a baby boy, from being annoying is that he can’t talk. The two little girls just look woeful and do dumb things throughout the series because Eve is, as many try to make her out to be, a bad mum. It’s the wine Andy that she’s a good lawyer and she doesn’t hesitate to tell people, “Fuck off.” Then her wet rag of a husband leaves for work and never comes back except in flashbacks being trash.

The next eight episodes are a slog through watching Eve unravel, speed off in her car to chase up some clue (really, there are at least two to three scenes of Eve kicking up gravel in each episode), and consort with “the wrong sort” who are really the right sort. Clue, chase, bad meet, repeat.

There is also, in each episode, usually at least one interminably long scene of Eve on the beach or in some high grass looking pensive and sad, solo or while her kids frolick about oblivious to the possibility that their dour dad is likely dead in a ditch next to the ringroad. And the soundtrack to these ponderous scenes are dreadful, knockoff Lillith Fair-type songs by someone who clearly must have an in with a producer or the director.

Why did I keep watching Keeping Faith? Well, “watching” is a stretch. The program was on in my vicinity because I wanted to see if my bafflement would turn into a fun hate-watch. Nope. Never did.

And I was hoping that the reason for the husband’s disappearance had nothing to do with sex, drugs, money or running afoul of some accented baduns. Yes, that’s a spoiler because you’ll guess exactly who did it and why within the first 20 minutes.

I wasn’t even going to review it because I was sure there was no way any streaming service would bother to pick this up. Boy was I wrong. Seriously, skip this show. Unless you want to watch it in preparation for the inexplicabley renewed season two.

Moral: every Jodi Picoult novel doesn’t have to be turned into a series or film. In fact, none of them do. I’ve got nothing against domestic lit, but I’m sure Jodi is rich enough without terrible adaptations mucking up her brand.


8 thoughts on “TV Review: Keeping Faith (BBC One)

  1. Jim Thompson.

    I really agree with the comments above. This is badly acted mumbling rubbish. How much money was wasted on this drivel?

      1. Christine Haddad

        I was beginning to feel like something out of The Emporers New Clothes, feeling I was the only one who just doesnt get it. Keep watching it and it just gets worse and worse. I really like Eve Myles and great fan of Mark Lewis Jones but the script is terrible. That stupid inspector and idiot sidekick?? They arrest with no evidence, kids taken away by social services with no good reason. Honestly nothing has made me so angry to watch! Given up even though I dragged myself to episode 6, now I dont even care what happened to the husband. Shame on you BBC!😡

  2. Martin

    What an appalling drama, no doubt subsidised by the Welsh Government as it was also filmed in the Welsh language. What totally escapes me is how so many critics have endorsed the hype. Long scenes with music, nil dialogue, supposedly artistic camera shots that would not look out of place in 1960s’ shampoo commercials and not in anyway advancing the plot, limited as it is. More padding in every episode with long close ups of Evan’s eyes and out of focus backgrounds. Police who acted more like bystanders than a team involved in a serious investigation and so many gaping holes in the plot and continuity that they are just not worth listing. We jumped ship before the close of Episode 4. Save me! It’s unfair to compare these and other recent dramas from the same stable with Scandinavian dramas which even at their worst will at least hold your interest.

  3. Simon Baseley

    We got Faith looking thoughtful, Faith looking tearful, angry, distraught, frightened. Endless close ups of the heroine’s highly mobile face, looking out to sea, gazing into a wine glass, looking through a car windscreen or into the far distance presumably contemplating how five years at RADA or wherever had led to her ending up appearing in this mush; mush the ending of which has been left sufficiently open so as to hint that the commissioning editor who gave the green light to it in the first place actually still has a job and may well give the go ahead for another series.

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