Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

People are voting emotionally.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

When the decomposed body of Melissa Young is found by a couple in their new flat, Detective Len Harper who is approaching retirement is determined to discover what happened to her and why nobody noticed she was missing for so long.This is really an old fashioned 'whodunnit.' The building is a house converted into 5 flats and nearly all the residents are not very nice people at all, some with serious issues.It is rather slow going, there is a lot of psychological games and this shows via flashbacks to their behaviour towards the victim who was an obese female.The detective on his one last case before retirement is doggedly persistent and there is an air of a Gothic melodrama which the finale very much confirms as there are twists after twists as to who the culprit might be.

This four part thriller shown on the BBC on consecutive Sundays turned out to be an excursion into modern-day Gothic melodrama mixed in with a good old-fashioned whodunit. Along the way it tries to make points about neighbourliness, loneliness and control as all of the inhabitants of a small block of flats conveniently seem to forget about the existence of the young, fat, solitary female who lived in the top-floor flat until two years after her disappearance, her bodily remains are discovered in the loft above her apartment, triggering the narrative.Cue red-herrings galore and a backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards use of flashback to fill in the lead-up to the slain girl's demise. The viewer is kept guessing as to who the actual perpetrator is with a veritable procession of possible candidates paraded before us, including a seedy old teacher and the mysterious young woman he keeps in his flat, a pair of lesbians, one nasty and dominating, the other humane but servile, a careworn divorcée male newspaper editor, his reporter girlfriend and surly, hormonal teenage son, who are all joined by a young couple, him a feckless jack-the-lad, her a good-natured Indian girl, heavily pregnant, who move into the flat below the dead girl's and who actually make the grisly discovery.Brought into investigate the death is crusty old soon-to-retire police detective David Threlfall, another Mr Lonely himself, who seems to relate to the dead girl so much that he pursues the case even after his last day on the job (and after his former colleagues have all moved on to their next cases) to the extent of staying overnight in her long abandoned flat, indeed for the epilogue we see him actually living there. He hits it off with the young mum-to-be and together they try to solve the mystery, indeed they are, along with the girl reporter, the only halfway decent people in the whole cast, the rest being an unappealing mixture of the venal, duplicitous, vindictive and just plain mean. For me this made it hard to relate to the bulk of the characters and stretched credibility to breaking point, I mean just how many horrible people can you fit into a block of flats at the same time?Anyway, it winds it way to an over-the-the-top gory ending, with more than one dumb way to die along the way. Somewhere in it all is probably a moral about looking out for your neighbours, but along the road, the writer and director seemingly got consumed by some mystical Gothic bug and decided to try and whip up a kind of "I Know What You Did In the Loft" finale. It's reasonably well acted, although I'm tiring a little of Stephen MacKintosh's pained look in every character he portrays but on the whole this was an okay, if very incredible, whodunit, whydunit and howdunit which at least had me stumped up until the end.

My husband and I have been very intrigued and thoroughly enjoying the "What Remains" series! I had not seen any information at all when I watched the first episode and wasn't sure what kind of series it was going to be at all.I will concede that the first episode is a bit slow, but this is because they are setting the stage and introducing the players. The story is very enthralling as more and more of the young woman's life (as well as the inter-relations with her neighbours) are exposed by the investigation.It is an interesting, if sad, commentary on today's self-focused lifestyle, where people don't know their neighbours and how that allows for all manner of unsavory secrets up to and possibly including murder!It is spectacularly acted and directed. Having only opportunity to watch the first two episodes, I am looking forward to episode 3 and 4!

I've watched the first 3 episodes (out of 4 I think) and am really enjoying this, as is my husband. It is an intriguing mystery about a young woman found dead in an attic many months after her death, and a cop's attempts to find out who did it and why nobody noticed she was missing for so long. For a TV drama, I'm finding this particularly gripping. It is very well directed and acted, particularly from the victim and the 17 year old son of the journalist. And its nice to see Russell Tovey's and Stephen Mackintosh's darker side - they are both very good too.I can't think what else to write in this tenth line other that to recommend that you give it a go on catch up or catch it next time.