Having basically burnt all his bridges in London by grassing the illegal activities of a colleague, Nicky Cole takes a Detective's job in the Newcastle police force. However he is barely welcome there and he is stuck on night duty with no sign of being moved to days. With an uncle and a young nephew at home, Nicky is kept busy but he still manages to do his job and proves to be a very able detective. Solving cases brings him into conflict with prosecutor Claire Maxwell but also into a partnership with Sergeant Rick Astel.I'm not the sort of person who would usually watch this type of drama – TV series, fairly clichéd and acting like a sort of entertainment 'fast food' – does the job without thrills but is hardly the sort of thing that really satisfies my taste buds. However I do like Don Gilet so I figured I'd give this a go as it is rare that he gets a large role (lead role) in a mainstream drama like this one. The plot is very clichéd and, in some regards, predictable but to be honest, why did you expect from a mainstream BBC drama on a Tuesday night? It is fluff – all that matters is that it is at least entertaining fluff. In that regard it more or less manages to be interesting enough and enjoyable enough to do the job. It has a slight swagger to it and the basic structure is familiar enough to never tax your brain so it more or less does what its audience would expect it to do.However it IS a bit too clichéd and clunky. If you can't see a romance on the cards from the first scene then you are very forgiving or very naïve. The dialogue is also very plodding at times and is too quick to sink into unrealistic lines which only exist in the mind of an average scriptwriter. This scriptwriter also gives us characters that are drawn in a very easy and lazy fashion – Nicky is very upright, he is cool, looks after a friend's child, is honest as the day is long and is good to those who don't deserve it – and never gives up on a case no matter how closed it seems! Likewise Claire is dutiful but is won over by Nicky; the other cops are comic, corrupt etc etc. It never really gets any better than this at all but I didn't expect any more than this and I was more or less able to enjoy it. The plot is quite interesting outside of the standard stuff and they have done a nice job of threading a few good crimes together.Of course it is still prime time filler that lacks imagination and you shouldn't expect too much. He stuff of corruption comes into it but it is all very black/white and simplistic, don't be expecting any of the complexities of The Shield or other cop imports – in fact this really pales when you view it in comparison to the current crop of US imports in the UK. The one thing I really didn't like about the series was related to it being black/white – it constantly plays the race card. From the opening scene where Nicky is pulled over and assaulted by the police for being black, the series keeps coming back to the 'you guys' stuff and, because it is not used well at all, it soon becomes tiring. Make a challenging drama about police racism if you wish but don't just throw it in because your character happens to be black. In some episodes it never raises its head but in other it is practically an obsession!Gilet is more or less the reason the show was entertaining as he is effortlessly charismatic and manages to cover the fact that his character is too basic and very poorly developed. He is a coolly guy, easy to look at and he makes for appealing lead character. Kirwan is terrible. Her delivery is flat and lifeless and she seems to have just decided that, if the script isn't going to bother then neither will she. Dunn is OK but many UK viewers will find it hard to forget his much better role as Alistair Campbell in the Rory Bremner show! Rodska, Hodgson and Morfitt are all fairly poor – just mugging along in resistant roles, and Harris gets old quickly with his dispensing of wisdom and subplots.Overall this is a British bit of primetime fluff but one that can be enjoyed as such due to some OK plotting and a good lead role from Gilet, who never lest the inadequacies of his script and character get in the way of a charismatic performance. However an obsession with racism, clichés, poor dialogue and predictable/lazy subplots all drag it down to the level of 'passable' and, compared with the smart US cop shows currently showing in the UK, this series is a little bit of an embarrassment. But it is harmless viewing for a Tuesday night.

I didn't even bother to watch this when it first started. Not another cop show, I thought. Just what the world needs. But after my mother said she'd seen it and said it was good, I thought I'd give it a try. Thankfully they don't make such a big deal of the racism issue although you know it is there. And whilst I agree that Nicky Cole is perhaps somewhat too good to be true, he isn't flawless. He makes mistakes and although he means well, he doesn't always manage to do the right thing. The one area where the series does fall down is the development of the Dervla Kerwan character, who is given too little to do. Perhaps the possibility of a relationship between her character and Don Gilet's was too obvious and a cliché as someone has already mentioned. Frankly, they could get rid of her character and it would make no difference to the show at all, so little impact she has made. This is no reflection on Dervla Kerwan, who is a good actress but she should get rid of her agent for making her take the part as it does nothing for her, especially as she is wiped off screen by Emma Cleasby's Sgt Brookes who is a much more vibrant character and is given probably more screen time to boot. Cleasby makes a great impact here and should be promoted to the leading female role next time round as she and Gilet have much better chemistry together.

OK so i read the last post about the series, and while i agree that this program has a lot of clichés in it that doesn't make it a bad program.Now-a-days too many programs and films give you either an anti hero or a hero who is not clean cut, sometimes its nice to have a hero who does always win in the end. What i see as the major selling point of the program is the overall story, DS Nicky Cole moves to newcastle after he informs on his senior officer in London on corruption charges, when he arrives (he moved police departments too so now he works in the newcastle police) he find out that his new senior office may have knowen his old one, and he is stuck on the night shift.Nicky proceeds to solve all the crimes put before him, and get past many of the problems facing him (racisim - although thankfully this is a minor pert in the show, i don't like shows where the colored hero is always either facing large amounts of racist comments and deals with it proving everyone wrong, or where they continually feel the need to prove themselves and ever second line it 'its because i'm black' this show has just about the perfect balance there is tension with some of the newcastle 'locals' but Nicky seems to just take it in his stride, on episode he is very cool with a banana, just watch it and you'll see what i mean) such as tension with other officers and locals and never being given the chance to get moved to the day shift.As this is only a 6 part story continuity is hard as they are trying to put a lot of story is to a short time, you have all the 'daily' stories, the over all 'big' storyline, the little tangets with the other characters and such like.all in all i recommend you watch this, you may like it you may not, but at the end of the day its all about what you like isn't it!!

The hero in this is frankly too good to be true.He is bringing up someone else's child. Is a model police officer.I have only seen one episode and it is already obvious that he is going to get together with the lawyer after he (surprise surprise) got off on the wrong foot with her.I also have doubts as to whether he will ever fail to solve the crime and bring the baddies to book.As always with any drama set in Newcastle, every opportunity is taken for a backdrop of the Tyne Bridge.In short, an abundance of cliches.