A Difficult Show to Rate

This show is difficult to rate because of the dramatic shift between seasons.

If you look through the reviews on IMDB, you will quickly notice that most of the very high ratings 8/9/10 were posted in 2013, at the conclusion of the show's first season. That is because the first season covering the police investigation was excellent, and I would highly recommend it to everyone.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said thereafter. Season 2 falls apart almost from he start, as the show shifts gears from a police investigation to a trial. Where the first season worked hard to maintain its credibility as a police drama, the second season throws credibility entirely to the wind, then goes and tracks it down, drags in through the mud, and takes a great steaming dump upon its battered corpse. Not a single element of the courtroom portion of the show is even remotely believable. I'm not going to begin listing what is so horrible about it, because the list is literally "every possible thing." It's as if the writers not only had never been in a courtroom and hadn't bothered to do any research, but had also come directly from another planet and thus lacked all exposure to the basics of how courts work. It's barely even "bad TV court," because it is significantly worse than most other bad TV portrayals of court. It was so painful to watch that I finally had to simply turn it off.

So that's really what it comes down to. As someone who is intimately familiar with police investigations, I found little to complain about technically-speaking in the first season, which is where I was most likely to have objections. Some of their decision-making was bad, but I don't recall anything being technically wrong. And then when it came to court, with which I have only casual familiarity, their portrayal was so hideously bad that even a layman couldn't fail to be horrified. What a terrible let-down.

In conclusion, for a very tough grader like myself, the excellent Season 1 earned 8 stars, while the absolutely abysmal Season 2 earned 1 star, and I've balanced them by giving the show a barely passing grade of 5. What a waste.