I have to say this is one of the more thought provoking series I have seen in a while, probably because there is a lot of it I don't understand and even more that I understand but which defies logic. But perhaps that is exactly what its producers intended. There can surely be few things more boring, or unsexy, than someone else's affair. Thrilling for those involved I'm sure but excruciating for everyone else, and people endlessly rutting in public places hardly constitutes a plot. Consequently I almost gave up about 50 minutes into the first episode. The extreme ferocity of the rape at the end of this episode certainly produced the shock the producers intended, although the micro-second "Jekyll and Hyde" transition from harmless academic to brutal rapist animal did seem too excessive to be likely. The rapist's subsequent reversion back to someone who sends flowers and texts and acts more like a besotted, deluded dingbat rather than a malicious stalker adds to the confusion. It is never explained how George Selway knew about their affair and indeed by the end of the series one wonders if he ever did know. Even if he did, it beggars belief he would rely on this tawdry piece of information to ensure she did not report the rape, so the rape, and the non-reporting of it, simply do not make sense. In the immediate aftermath of the rape the viewer is led to think that the reason Yvonne does not report it is so her affair does not come out into the open. Then suddenly that whole scenario goes out the window and the reason for not reporting becomes because of the process and shame involved in doing so. It is all rather confusing. Surprisingly she has virtually no physical marks after this brutal ordeal, just the tidiest of finger marks and no sign of the shiner she should have had from being whacked in the face. To be honest I would have expected her to have more marks on her body from her shenanigans with Mark Costly down in the crypt. Through all this we are all wondering what she sees in this Costly character who has all the charisma of a sack of spuds. This, I suppose, is the whole point, that she has distorted this supremely dull person into her knight, and from this we really should have guessed right from the start that Yvonne is a sandwich short of a picnic, if not an entire hamper short of a picnic.Fast forward and we find our lovers sitting in a car outside the rapist's house. And again, thinking back, we should all have guessed that this sudden unexplained plot jerk means that some crucial information has been deliberately withheld from the viewer. Something unnamed but obviously dastardly goes down in George's flat so we are not surprised when the Police interrupt Yvonne and her family in a restaurant and arrest her. But on the other hand we really should be surprised because how did the police know she was involved and how did they know she was in that restaurant? What gave them away, and so quickly, is never revealed.In amongst all this we have a few red herrings thrown in for good measure, a troubled son whose story turns out to be irrelevant and a husband's dalliance with a student, which I presume is supposed to make our heroine look a little less slutty and justified in her affair.The trial is all a bit weird, being more a posthumous trial of George Selway for rape rather than a trial of Yvonne and Mark for murder. By the end of it we have a woman who has majorly perjured herself to the point no one would believe she had been raped at all, and we have no idea why a person who has clearly murdered someone gets convicted of manslaughter, nor how someone who is obviously an accomplice to murder escapes conviction completely. It is difficult not to think the series trivialises rape. We have, for instance, Yvonne not reporting a rape, and perjuring herself in Court, because she is apparently more ashamed of being discovered as a cheating wife than she is concerned about being raped, implying that in the scheme of things rape is the lesser offense. In the epilogue we find out what the crucial missing preamble to the murder was, and it is difficult not to feel a little cheated. Deliberately withholding information just to create a shock at the end is a cheap trick, it is like Sherlock Holmes, after painstakingly analysing the ash from a cigar and the tattoos on someone's back, announces the murderer is someone that has not even been introduced to the reader. We are left wondering just what else has been left out, or indeed if any of the bits we have been shown are actually true. The entire rug of the series is pulled from under us. Once again perhaps this dislocation is exactly what the producers wanted but it is treading a fine line between shocking and infuriating viewers. So what do we have at the end? A couple of loonies, a dead rapist and a bunch of question marks. My verdict is that while generally enjoyable the series is far too simplistic and that the only reason it "worked" at all is because it was so rushed that viewers mis- interpreted the obvious non sequiturs and gaping holes as being "deep" and "thought provoking" rather than the obvious plot flaws they are.

This miniseries stars Emily Watson as a middle-aged, married scientist who lives and works in London. She meets a man with whom she quickly embarks on a sex-only secret affair, involving having sex in public places in central London. She is raped by a colleague and then asks her sex buddy to kill the rapist. The plot is ludicrous. A quiet, highly-educated, married, middle-aged woman with a successful career wouldn't risk it all by having casual sex with a stranger in public! In the unlikely event that she has a sex buddy, he wouldn't commit a murder for her!

Though, I was in fact hoping to find a 'secret Sherlock' episode, I was happy with Apple Tree Yard as a whole.I see some complaints it was TOO SLOW. It only has 4 episodes, give it a chance, lol. Have a bit of patience.It had intrigue, lust, complicated family and marital relations. Humans that make poor choices and a question as to who is the villain. I loved the sets from just the Apple Tree Yard SW1 Alley to the chapel of the Commons.If people wanted Sherlock and didn't get it, they got a good mystery at least. On top of being a thriller and a damn good drama. You get an insanely intense and mind blowing finale.Emily Watson was great and the rest of the cast were certainly very good. Creepy ending...I hope for another series of this! 8/10

It's difficult to comment and criticize specific issues without giving too much away-I shall edit and add additional material as the drama unfolds...I'm rather a fan of slow-burners-I certainly prefer them to the usual juvenile offerings of whizz-bangs, pointless shouty-shouty arguments and endless car chases which seem to permeate everything these days, but I think the BBC have taken things rather to the extreme this time. Sunday night dramas are not really my cup of tea, but after hearing an interview on the wireless with both Emily Watson (who sadly seems to have fallen off the radar in recent years-I loved her in Gosford Park), and Ben Chaplin (a woefully underused actor IMHO), I thought 'why not?'.. Our story opens with Dr Yvonne Carmichael viewed through the window of a prison service transport (a goof, actually, but an understandable one-all windows in these vans have one-way, not two-way glass), staring at the Thames, and reminiscing and ruminating over the course of her life, and the events of the last nine months. Then a segue to her earlier interrogation by a Select Commons Committee (and we discover she's done this before) tells us she is a highly educated professional, and considered an expert in her field, which makes the story that subsequently unfolds all the more difficult to swallow. Yes, I agree with the basic premise that life doesn't end at 50, nor do a woman's sexual urges automatically switch off, but it's difficult to match this sudden outpouring of reckless passion with Watson's otherwise virtually deadpan performance-another character comments later in the episode that she looked like the cat that got the cream (I'm paraphrasing), but I could see no change in her demeanour, indeed, when she suspects her husband (another fine workmanlike performance from Mark Bonnar-shame we never get to see him on the big screen) of past infidelity, and challenges him on the subject, she might just as well have been discussing the shopping list. The only time she evinced any emotion (other than with The Stranger), was in relating the proposition put to her by one of her graduate students, and that was quickly stifled... This contributes to a complete lack of empathy and engagement with her character. Although we know virtually nothing about The Stranger (Ben Chapman), his is by far the more sympathetic role, admitting to his foibles, effortlessly charming, and as excited to embark on a new adventure as a small child... I think the problem here is poor direction. I'm not familiar with Jessica Hobbs' work (see above), but she seems to be directing by the numbers here, and rather sketchily at that. We know that the two main characters are played by very able actors, and I've no doubt that the source material is top-notch, but in the modern tradition, this mini-series has been stretched to cover four hour-long episodes, by introducing too much 'filler', and lots of staring-into-the-middle-distance, which is supposed to convey deep, meaningful thinking (and fails), when it would have been far better to smarten up the pace, and reduce the running time.I'm no prude, by any means, but I fail to see why modern dramas rely so heavily on salaciously suggestive detail (without actually revealing anything), and deliberately shocking language, while ignoring plot and character development. In this case, granted, it's intrinsic to the setup to keep details of The Stranger to a minimum, especially as the drama is told from Carmichael's POV, and we do learn something of Yvonne's home life (she's soon to become a grandmother), but cannot see the benefit of delivering such lines as 'you're ****ing a spook'-this from a professional expert addressed earlier as 'professor'-it might also be pointed out here that Carmichael's explanation of the known functions of, breakdown and distribution of human genetic material would not have passed muster in a GCSE examination-I know she was interpreting to a non-expert, but as a leading academic in her field, this just didn't work.This first episode ended after a shockingly brutal attack (more evidence that this is definitely presented from the female perspective-by no means a bad thing), and, rather in the 'Saturday Morning Pictures' tradition, left us on a cliff-edge, ready for the next instalment. It is reasonably well-written, beautifully photographed (London never looked so grey, and yet so enticing at the same time), but it desperately needs to go up a gear, or risk losing its audience. Let's see what happens next week-watch this space...