You get the impression ITV have high hopes for last night's new ITV1 Max Beesley drama, Talk to Me, in which he plays a shock jock DJ, Mitch, who's in love with his best mate and producer's fiancee, Claire.
The four-parter is the kind of sassy, contemporary piece that director of television Simon Shaps and drama controller Laura Mackie say they want more of.
But what did the critics think?
Zoe Williams, in the Guardian, was not impressed:
'In a post-Paul Abbott world, where we all know it's possible to put characters on the screen, and hear them sound uncannily like actual people, how did they think they could get away with this? I don't care for your pretty cast and your arty low-lit camera angles. I just want a decent script. Take away these inadequate, black-and-white dogs, and bring me just one teeny tiny talking pig.'
The Independent's Thomas Sutcliffe described Talk to Me as a 'robustly post watershed drama' - ie a fair bit of shagging and rude language.
'[Mitch] does adore Claire when she needs adoration, and he is played by Max Beesley, which might plausibly be enough for her to overcome his callow lad mag approach to sexual politics. Unfortunately, it gives us at home a Grouch Marx problem: how can we respect a woman who has so little self respect that she'll let Mitch bed her? Or, for that matter, a mother who appears to forget that she's got a baby when she has a row with her husband?'
Tim Teeman, in the Times, is seduced despite himself:
'Talk to Me shouldn't work: it plunders, either shamelessly or unwittingly, from every smart group-of-friends drama yet produced. The characters - the male slag who's a good boy really, the tremulous heroine stuck between love and lust, a career and new motherhood - have been done a million times before... But it just seduces you, as ruthlessly as Mitch beds his ladies.
'...We know that there will be regret and recriminations, and the odd punch thrown. The climax has to be an on-air mea culpa from bad boy Mitch. But who cares? Dearbhla Walsh's sensuous direction means every interior looks divine, every argument is punctuated by thick, gloopy rain. You can feel the crisp chill of a glass of white. As the seductive soft-rock soundtrack plays over each trembling cheek and broken heart, you just sit there, pressing pause. Panelled leather headboards: lovely.'
