The producers of this series were clearly masochists. Why else would you cast a famous US movie actress, set the production in the rural north west of England, have the said actress play an Irish traveller (Mia) who is an assassin, and for good measure make the character trans. The logistics of making this production happen are mind boggling.
Having said all that it actually works. I enjoyed the entire series, frustrating as it was in parts. The cliff-hanger ending was possibly one of the most frustrating bits of TV I've ever watched; knowing that the second series hadn't been commissioned. It is sort of Emmerdale (British rural soap opera) meets Snatch meets the Crying Game.
Obviously the series isn't meant to be taken too seriously so I'm not going to point out the myriad of plot holes. There was just too much time taken up with shots of the countryside which got very tedious and too much time focusing Mia's family. It felt as if many of the characters in it would have been much more at home in a soap opera like Emmerdale and they were out acted by Chloe Sevigny.
I also think Chloe Sevigny portrayal of Mia is flawed. She seems more like Hayley from Coronation Street (another British soap). She is not street-wise enough to be a hit-man; someone who might be called the apex predator of the criminal underworld. I think the producers should have watched some modern LGBT cinema. For instance Mina Orfanou in Strella (2009), who plays the trans character of the title. Actually, I think Mia wouldn't last 5 minutes around Strella.
Overall episodes 1 and 2 were the most interesting, 3 to 5 just wasted too much time with John, and 6 was also good. I'd have liked to know more about the circus family.
As a bit of trivia the Butterfly scene in episode 6 is from "Branded to Kill" (1967) by Seijun Suzuki.
I hope that maybe in a few years this series gets a reboot, maybe set in America on US TV. It's too good an idea to go to waste.
