Stolen

It has been a long time since I was so bored by a well-intended programme. The do-goody and moral indignation screamed at you at every so laboured and clumsy turn. The clichéd contrasts with social good life were banal and thin of any substance as to be an irritant. No wonder the scarcely one-dimensional characters struggled to fill their allotted space. No dialogue worth mentioning, no character to offer and a plot that struggled to make sense to all involved, other than the author. Credit where it is due, he surely, at some time must have believed in his story. Even the staged car crash, no not the programme but an actual scene, was so staged and hammed up that no one, crew, actors, extras least of all the audience believed, or cared. Thanks goodness for the mobile, that get me out of here plot changer, so heavily used, was there a scene change that did not rely on it? Such worthy actors, such a worthy cause and so wasted opportunity. Filmed in a city I know not where, even the guessing game of where on earth, England or a Eastern European cheapo location failed to keep my arm twitching as I checked my watch so frequently, yes, really yes the minutes dragged by. Hope against hope that finally something would be said that mattered. There you have it. A dismal failure of drama. Nothing of content to even launch a documentary and not even enough to puff up a docudrama. Just a miserable failure. But we do care, we want to understand the issues behind child trafficking. We want to know why the 'police', the agencies involved, are all so helpless, we want to know how the traffickers can get rich yet be beyond the law. There is a programme there, waiting to be made. But it certainly was not Stolen.