Ben Dowell

It tries its best, even giving Rhaenyra a speech about having the “weak and feeble body of a woman”, which borrows almost word for word from Elizabeth I’s famous address at Tilbury before the Spanish Armada arrived. But this points to an essential difficulty I have with this show: all too often it feels so old hat, so reheated and, well, so, so boring.

There isn’t anything to truly despise about this nostalgia fest of young love, blanket-wrapped heart-to-hearts, sunlit skies and lakeside swims that are really just excuses for many close-ups of Charlie (Michael Bradway) and Sam’s torsos. But, fairly faithfully adapted from Carley Fortune’s 2022 novel Every Summer After, this Prime Video series does feel cynical.

Thankfully, the series does not recreate the killing or show its aftermath, but does effectively reveal the morass of horrors inflicted on this family. .... The middle part of the drama inevitably becomes bogged down by the complexities of the investigation.

While there are moments when you feel he is winging it, Clarkson winging it is still deliciously funny, such as when he settles down for a healthy dairy-based breakfast and rails against eating “knob cheese”.

Yellowstone had slightly run out of steam and this is the same mix of brutality and soapy camp transplanted (literally) to pastures new.

“Do we have bottarga?” Gennaro asks at one point. And when you’re actually more interested in the answer to that question than identifying the killer, it’s safe to say that this is a show in need of slightly better ingredients.

Grim, claustrophobic, nihilistic, deeply unpleasant — this is all these things. But it’s beautifully made and shot.

But while the stage is set for more heartbreak and danger, you also sense that this show has grown up along with its ensemble.

Morton isn’t really interested in evoking Trumpism as much as serving up yet another delicious sight of Fletcher in a situation he really doesn’t understand (and doesn’t seem that keen on understanding either).

The show feels like another teenage drama set within an all-too-familiar landscape, and even at times like a dull and tortuous all-girl Harry Potter yarn — all that pubescent struggling and another prestige show done to death.