Mother is not happy…

When Raised By Wolves reverse bungee-jumped over the shark at the end of season 1, with Mother giving birth to a flying snake and a bonkers flight through the core of the planet, my sneaking admiration for anything so brazenly ridiculous lured me into publicly pledging to see where season 2 would take us.

Sadly, it’s nowhere very exciting.

Bare-faced absurdity has been replaced with self indulgent rent-a-myth philosophising.  What was once an elegant ‘Eden-esque’ tale of two androids trying to raise the last human children from a devastated Earth is now a tedious space opera about ‘atheists’ and ‘mythraics’ who seem to be plentiful enough to wage war on each other among some very pretty South African Baobabs. I do love baobab trees, having wondered at their majesty and beauty in Madagascar a few years ago, so I hope that any that come to a bad end will be of the CGI variety.

And that’s the problem with this series. I care much more about the fate of living breathing trees than any of the wooden and dreadfully acted characters.  I don’t want to cast aspersions on any individual artistes but, goodness me, the acting is consistently awful. To be fair they don’t have much to work with script wise, and I sense that the directorial talent employed perhaps isn’t that well versed with how to get the best from younger performers. Having said that, there was surely a chance to recast some of the weaker personnel from season 1, but unfortunately no such opportunity was exploited – and the adult actors aren’t exactly setting a very high bar.

Perhaps others will get more from this than I do, but ploughing through two tedious 46 minute episodes was a challenge. There is nothing at the heart of this show. Who am I supposed to be rooting for? Why should I care? Give me something to stop me worrying about the woodwork, the terrible costumes and the worst hair cuts in any show since about 1981. I hereby formally rescind my pledge.  I really do have better things to do. 4/10

Martin Jameson