FOOLS GOLD (BLOODLANDS, SERIES TWO)

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It's not that hard to convey just how poor the first series of BBC1's Northern Ireland cop drama 'Bloodlands' really was.

What's hard to fathom, though, is just how quickly the BBC moved to give this ridiculous thriller a second series.

As the credits rolled on a show that was about as credible as BBC Northern Ireland's God awful sitcom 'Give My Head Peace', a second series was hastily announced.

And so here we are, wading once again into the murky waters of Northern Ireland's Troubles and their impact on the present.

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If sitting down to watch Series One of 'Bloodlands' was a joyless experience, Series Two offered little hope that it could somehow conjure a plausible plot.

'Bloodlands' is the creation of the Northern Irish writer Chris Brandon.

It counts among its executive producers Jed Mercurio who knows a thing or two about crafting taut thrillers.

So why is the show so dire?

This time around, the programme makers do appear to have taken some of the criticisms of the first series onboard.

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One of the problems Series One had was that it was given just four episodes to tell its ambitious, nonsensical story.

This meant the show ran headlong into plots that made little sense to the viewer because Brandon didn't have the time to properly develop them.

In Series Two, Brandon and his directors Jon East and Audrey Cooke have been given six episodes to play with.

Unfortunately, that counts for very little because from the off the show is still struggling with a bad case of dry rot.

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There's still some awful dialogue to wade through - although mercifully, Brandon has abandoned his tendency to have his characters talk about "the peace" like they did in the first series which no-one in Northern Ireland actually uses to describe "the peace process".

Curly haired, Olivier Award winning actor and 'Young Offenders' star Chris Walley has also been given a lot more to do in Series Two, which is a bit of a relief because he appeared to be comatose in the last series.

Walley's character Birdy spent most of his time standing around looking gormless in a woolly jumper.

But before I go further into Series Two, it's important to state at this point that it is virtually impossible to review the second series without giving away a huge plot spoiler.

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So if you didn't endure the previous series of 'Bloodlands' when it first aired in February and March 2021 but are feeling masochistic enough to eventually watch it, it probably makes sense to return to this review once you have looked at the first series.

(MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!)

Series one of 'Bloodlands' focused on an investigation by James Nesbitt's DCI Tom Brannick and his colleagues into a notorious assassin from the tail end of the Troubles called Goliath who appeared to target people on all sides.

Brandon and the programme makers were pretty proud of themselves when it was revealed towards the end of the first series that - gasp! - Brannick was Goliath.

Brannick, however, managed to keep his identity secret and dupe his Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) colleagues by framing a dead man, Peter Balance's Pat Keenan for the killings.

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Series Two begins Indiana Jones style with a story about hidden gold - okay, I admit, that's a bit of an exaggeration. It's more like Gryff Rhys Jones.

Brandon starts with a preamble that unfolds during the final months of the Troubles.

We see Brannick in 1998 wearing a balaclava and rather unconvincingly clutching a photo of his baby daughter while watching IRA members offloading arms and ammunition onto an island in Strangford Lough.

Carrying two heavy cases, the IRA men are about to bury their cache of weapons when DCI Brannick ambushes them - shooting them both in the head.

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There's a really horrific moment when Brannick peels off his balaclava to reveal a weird looking, de-aged CGI James Nesbitt face.

Director Jon East and his effects team are clearly aiming to make Nesbitt look 24 years younger in much the same way Martin Scorsese tried with Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in 'The Irishman'.

And just like that film the effect looks really freaky.

Once we have recovered from the dodgy CGI, we realise the weapons cases contained bars of gold.

This prompts the weird looking, younger version of Brannick to stare in awe into the dark winter's night.

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Throughout the show we notice Brannick really does love a good meaningful stare.

Across the series, Nesbitt delivers sinister stares, worried states, guilty stares - he can do the lot.

When we skip to the present day, Brannick and his eager colleague, Charlene McKenna's DS Niamh McGovern are summoned from the always bustling Dunfolan PSNI station to the shores of Strangford Lough.

The body of an accountant Colin Foyle has been discovered and as they pick through the forensics at the murder scene, Brannick gets to stare into the distance in shock because he knows the victim.

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Foyle, we discover, was his accountant and had stashed away the gold bars from 1998 for him.

His murder prompts Brannick to check a hiding place used for storing the gold and he is stunned to discover the bars have been removed.

Brannick and his PSNI colleagues learn that Foyle recently remarried following the death of his first wife.

His new Mrs is Victoria Smurfit's shifty Olivia Foyle who is so clearly a femme fatale she might as well wear sandwich board on her at all times with "femme fatale" emblazoned on it.

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The fact that Olivia only recently married Foyle makes her a person of interest to Brannick, McGovern, Birdy and their boss, Lorcan Cranitch's blustering DCS Jackie Twomey.

Brannick, of course, has another agenda and is desperate to find out if she knows anything about the whereabouts of the gold.

Attention switches to Diarmuid Murtagh's Robert Dardis, an ex-soldier turned private hire driver for the Foyles who the police suspect may have been in league with Olivia and had a hand in the accountant's death.

When it emerges Olivia stood to gain nothing from her husband's will, it further arouses Brannick's suspicions about her and the gold.

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When he is not trying to decipher Olivia's true intentions or fretting about how to stay three steps ahead of his colleagues, Brannick tends to his daughter, Lola Petticrew's Izzy - helping her purchase a house.

Unbeknown to him, Izzy gets romantically involved with his mild mannered colleague Birdy who is afraid to reveal their clandestine relationship to the DCI.

When Dardis is arrested and taken into police protection, Brannick is keen to find out from him what he and Olivia know about the gold.

The crooked DCI removes Dardis from a police safe house and kills him in a flash of temper after the suspect mentions Goliath.

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Forced to get rid of Dardis' body, he watches as his colleague Niamh blames herself for the ex-soldier apparently doing a runner.

When Jonjo O'Neill's baseball cap wearing Boston Irish gangster Ryan Savage turns up in Belfast looking to recover the gold his family originally intended for the IRA, Brannick finds himself forging all kinds of alliances that risk him being exposed as a corrupt cop.

Savage by name and savage by nature, the gangster leans on Olivia to recover the gold.

Can DCI Brannick avoid dying, being exposed or both?

Do we care?

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Brandon's second series of 'Bloodlands' is as slickly directed as its predecessor.

However that counts for very little in a show that lacks much credibility.

The second series once again proves you can dress a turkey up all you like but it'll still a turkey.

The simple reality is that the writing in 'Bloodlands' isn't good enough, with the show sometimes trotting out predictable cop drama tropes and often hatching plots that stretch credulity.

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Brandon's plot of gold is nonsense, while the treatment of Brannick's PSNI colleagues is just poor.

Brannick appears to work with some spectacularly inept investigators and he easily runs rings around them.

As for the cast, Nesbitt just hares around like he did in Series One, sporting a pained, constipated expression on his face.

McKenna struggles with an underwhelming role as his earnest PSNI partner - although Brandon at least has dialled down her tendency in the first series to constantly shout out her theories about certain crimes no matter who was present.

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Cranitch huffs and puffs his way through some predictably dull Captain Dobie-style dialogue, either growling at his PSNI colleagues or looking pompous.

It is good to see Walley getting more to do this time around with a more substantial part.

However his shy guy routine does get a bit wearisome at times, especially around Petticrew who is saddled with a one note role as the apple of her daddy's eye.

Smurfit appears to relish the chance to vamp it up as if she's in a 1990s Sharon Stone movie but again, it's a really limited and poorly written role.

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O'Neill goes for broke as the Boston Irish mobster but he lacks sufficient menace even when his character is carrying out gruesome acts of violence 

Don Wycherley and Dan Gordon turn up to trot out standard guest roles as shifty solicitors, while Murtagh is incredibly stiff as Dardis.

It is notable that Michael Smiley, Susan Lynch and Flora Montgomery do not reprise their roles from the first series.

And when your strongest cards from a pretty weak first series go AWOL, that probably tells you all you need to know.

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Dodgy CGI aside, Brandon, West and Cooke deliver a slick looking show augmented by Ruth Barrett's bombastic 'Line of Duty' style musical score.

However the whole venture seems pointless.

As I have argued before, it's hard to understand why the BBC seems so seduced by Brandon's show when there are plenty of examples out there of decent crime thrillers by Northern Irish writers that dwell on themes inspired by the Troubles.

Those novels tackle those themes more convincingly than 'Bloodlands'.

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Yet here we are.

Why is the BBC wasting its time on a show that lost the plot pretty much from the off?

Why invest in a show that is so cackhanded in its treatment of the Troubles and its legacy?

It's time for the BBC to admit 'Bloodlands' has failed.

It's time to finally admit its war is over.

(Series two of 'Bloodlands' was broadcast on BBC1 in the UK and Ireland from September 18-October 23, 2022)