Critic Reviews

No one's in a hurry to explain everything all at once, though it will all be explained eventually. A viewer just has to put up with a few blind alleys and a bit of head-scratching before the various plotlines—which include a "kill list" from the Ragdoll Killer that includes the name "Nathan Rose"—converge into something coherent. And, as it turns out, compelling.

You will know within 10 minutes whether the operatic ultraviolence, black comedy and arch, very nearly overwritten dialogue make you wriggle with joy or combust with irritation. If you like it, there is a new sleuthing duo to obsess over.

Ragdoll is, as you’ll have gathered, laughably over-the-top but it’s also genuinely funny. By far the best part of it is Rose’s relationship with Baxter.

The plot is silly. ... However, it is saved by deadpan funny, charismatic performances from Lloyd-Hughes and Thalissa Teixeira as his boss, DI Emily Baxter, along with their young sidekick, a worthy, earnest American DC, Lake Edmunds (Lucy Hale). It is urban noir with laughs.

Not for the squeamish. ... Don't try to make sense of any of it. Just cover your eyes and watch if you dare. [22 Nov - 5 Dec 2021, p.9]

While the comedy of the series doesn’t work most of the time, Ragdoll’s investigation into its ruthless killer will likely be intriguing enough to keep viewers engaged.

We hope the muddled first episode of Ragdoll isn’t an indication of where the series is going. The Ragdoll Killer presents an interesting case, but there’s so much thrown into the mix that we get the feeling the mystery is going to suffer under a pile of quips and contrivances.

[The killer is a] combination of so many near-psychic killers engaged in so many games of cat-and-mouse with so many different detectives that he’s never at any point scary or disturbing on his own. All the excessive business renders moot any attempt to play along with the mystery. You’re supposed to invest instead, I guess, in the partnership at the show’s center. But other than forced banter, there isn’t much there.

While much has been made of the fact Ragdoll has been co-produced by the makers of Killing Eve, it lacked that show’s perfectly calibrated wit. Instead it chucked in one-liners as though they were going out of fashion.