London's burning (London's Burning)

Name: polydeuces

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Product:	London's Burning
Date:	16/06/08 (4 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: -

Disadvantages: -

This is a programme almost entirely devoted to the personal lives of a group of people who are apparently firefighters. I suppose having endless series about the other emergency services - police, hospitals, er vets it is de rigeur to have one set in a fire station. Unfortunately (and I suppose thankfully) there are only a limited number of ways the writers can use this background. Hence the fact that the personal lives of the characters swamp the occasional work they have with a hose or the jaws of life.

The brigade commander still looks as if he's likely to ask them all whether they want to swap their house insurance to Direct Line. He is presently struggling through the most implausible story line where his female friend (Shoestrings receptionist for those who like TV's useless facts) wants to develop an area and it might get in the way of fire engines getting to incidents quickly. How do they keep their face straight.
The station team leader's wife has a baby late in life so Look Out - post-natal depression story line can't be far behind. There is a passably pretty female so her rape story line was inevitable but this now becomes a stalker/revenge story as well. The other characters are a ridiculous cross-section of black/homosexual/good/bad/lazy that only seems to happen in a series like this one. A lot is made of the fact that they are a team who work together and share everything. This tends to mean sharing every detail of their lives with their colleagues.

They all wear their emotions on their sleeves like Brownies wear badges. Not only do all deal with their own pain they feel each others pain too because they are a team. With London's Burning there is a lot of pain, in fact the whole thing is a pain.
London's Burning is really just another soap. The connection with the fire service gets more tenuous with each series. Too many of the characters you would either dislike or worse still not care about. It is not that a series set around the fire service is per se going to be dull. It is a good backdrop for what could be an action packed drama. Sadly with London's Burning there is too little action and too much melodrama.

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