The Deep was a BBC miniseries that was launched with a certain amount of hype to it but not so much that any sense of mystery was lost about what it was all about. On the face of it there did seem to be potential for it to be good – it had a budget, it had ambition (for a BBC miniseries anyway), it had some "big names" and the mystery around the plot meant that I was interested from the start. Sadly this interest did not last because The Deep is sunk (hey, every other review is full of puns) by terrible writing – from the overall concept through to the individual lines handed to the cast.
I've posted that this review contains spoilers so that I can "spoil" the mystery here, but to be honest it is all so generic that once you realise that this is not The Abyss, the rest sort of fills itself in. Essentially we have secretive agencies, a discovery that threatens "big oil", internal fights and lots of momentary crisis. And I mean lots. Rather than base the drama on a strong bed, the writers fill the 5 hour runtime (and you'll feel every minute of it) by having one crisis after another. Something is always about to explode or flood, someone is always cut off from somewhere else but the good news that every single one of the problems can be solved with an equally momentary solution that involves someone going somewhere at risk, twisting something or some other solution that has come straight out of the "submarine drama" handbook. Very quickly it just comes over as repetitive and you stop caring. Characters die, you don't care. Characters sacrifice themselves for the greater good – you don't care. Not caring is a bit of a problem when you're supposed to be watching a show for 5 hours – it is not the emotion most writers go for in their viewers but these ones couldn't have nailed it better if they had tried (which I'm not convinced they weren't).
Outside of the specific crisis of that moment, the overall plot is poor as well. It is all very vague (even once you get to the end) and none of it hangs together, failing to capture the feel that such a large plot needed. The "importance" of the plot is global, the stakes are life and death but the delivery is mundane and stagey, which really takes the edge of the bigger picture and essentially means the viewer is only left with the current momentary crisis – which, as I said, are repetitive and "genre 101". The dialogue is just as bad. Everything is explained several times so that viewer can understand what the next crisis is and how it can be solved. There are very few dialogue scenes that do not serve as exposition and this just adds to the tiresome effect.
The cast are not huge names but the main players are big names for this type of thing, shame then that none of them have anything to work with. The same vagueness in the overall plotting has infected the direction of the cast because none of them seem to be able to capture the tone of the piece in their performances. Driver does not convince as the captain of this boat – not because she is a woman or young but just because her performance is so poor. She is not only reading lines but they are awful lines. Nesbitt does himself no favours here apart from showing that he will always try hard. On paper his character is the most interesting and has the "strongest" scenes in terms of emotion but the writing of them leaves him alone and in the end he just ends up overdoing his emotion without any internal base, making it feel hammy and empty. This goes the same for Brady. Visnjic has little to do – his days as global heart-throb on ER seem a long time ago now. Dhawan, Fitatova and "the other girl" are simply too young to convince – it is all very deliberate casting in terms of having young faces up to attract younger viewers but (a) it doesn't work as they never convince and (b) any younger viewer attracted on the basis of the casting will quickly be tuning out on the basis of the writing.
I know I have not really had a good word to say about The Deep but I will concede that it is not awful, it is just that it is simply not any good. It is incredibly bland in the overall delivery and the writing is roundly poor. The dialogue is mostly bad because it is used to explain the next generic crisis that is happening to the crew. These are boring and the overall story is never really constructed in any sort of effective manner.
I've posted that this review contains spoilers so that I can "spoil" the mystery here, but to be honest it is all so generic that once you realise that this is not The Abyss, the rest sort of fills itself in. Essentially we have secretive agencies, a discovery that threatens "big oil", internal fights and lots of momentary crisis. And I mean lots. Rather than base the drama on a strong bed, the writers fill the 5 hour runtime (and you'll feel every minute of it) by having one crisis after another. Something is always about to explode or flood, someone is always cut off from somewhere else but the good news that every single one of the problems can be solved with an equally momentary solution that involves someone going somewhere at risk, twisting something or some other solution that has come straight out of the "submarine drama" handbook. Very quickly it just comes over as repetitive and you stop caring. Characters die, you don't care. Characters sacrifice themselves for the greater good – you don't care. Not caring is a bit of a problem when you're supposed to be watching a show for 5 hours – it is not the emotion most writers go for in their viewers but these ones couldn't have nailed it better if they had tried (which I'm not convinced they weren't).
Outside of the specific crisis of that moment, the overall plot is poor as well. It is all very vague (even once you get to the end) and none of it hangs together, failing to capture the feel that such a large plot needed. The "importance" of the plot is global, the stakes are life and death but the delivery is mundane and stagey, which really takes the edge of the bigger picture and essentially means the viewer is only left with the current momentary crisis – which, as I said, are repetitive and "genre 101". The dialogue is just as bad. Everything is explained several times so that viewer can understand what the next crisis is and how it can be solved. There are very few dialogue scenes that do not serve as exposition and this just adds to the tiresome effect.
The cast are not huge names but the main players are big names for this type of thing, shame then that none of them have anything to work with. The same vagueness in the overall plotting has infected the direction of the cast because none of them seem to be able to capture the tone of the piece in their performances. Driver does not convince as the captain of this boat – not because she is a woman or young but just because her performance is so poor. She is not only reading lines but they are awful lines. Nesbitt does himself no favours here apart from showing that he will always try hard. On paper his character is the most interesting and has the "strongest" scenes in terms of emotion but the writing of them leaves him alone and in the end he just ends up overdoing his emotion without any internal base, making it feel hammy and empty. This goes the same for Brady. Visnjic has little to do – his days as global heart-throb on ER seem a long time ago now. Dhawan, Fitatova and "the other girl" are simply too young to convince – it is all very deliberate casting in terms of having young faces up to attract younger viewers but (a) it doesn't work as they never convince and (b) any younger viewer attracted on the basis of the casting will quickly be tuning out on the basis of the writing.
I know I have not really had a good word to say about The Deep but I will concede that it is not awful, it is just that it is simply not any good. It is incredibly bland in the overall delivery and the writing is roundly poor. The dialogue is mostly bad because it is used to explain the next generic crisis that is happening to the crew. These are boring and the overall story is never really constructed in any sort of effective manner.