The final three minutes in every episode are worthy of making the viewer want to watch the next. The previous episodic minutes were slow, boring, devoid of any kind of reasonable or interesting plot, depicted poor characterizations and with a continuous display of terrible acting, direction, poor use of camera and completely devoid of dramatic technique. This is drivel at its finest BUT with a great hook at the end of each episode. The policing is portrayed as inept and borders on pathetic. Just not credible. Soft. Morse would have had this case wrapped up in 90 minutes flat. I also found the incessant whispering and pregnant and extended pauses just served to annoy rather than create a dramatic motif or anything of any real substance or value. However, do they know how to create a hook. Brilliant stuff. I think if the final three minutes from each of the first four episodes could be edited together along with a 10 minute opening act exposition explaining what happened and a 5 minute piece from the beginning and end of episode five as a finale then this could have been 30 minutes of compelling TV drama. As it is, this is a mess, with consistently bad acting, writing, direction, production values. I was wanting it to end and preferably with all the actors losing out in some way. I was attached to none of it and the leads were all terrible. The family unit stunk. But those closing three minutes...that is why it gets a 3 as opposed to a nil.

This series started with the great promise of a new story line and the first two episodes were good. But it all ground to a predicable mess. The romance between the two detectives was the first warning shot - poorly written and appallingly acted, and irrelevant to the story line. Most of the side stories (mother & old flame, father & girlfriend, old boyfriend etc) either went nowhere or looked like they belonged to another show! The plot of the final episode was not credible and I found myself calling out what was going to happen next it was so predicable. In the recent batch of UK police related dramas this is a real low water mark.

Generally speaking, there is a great first episode that hooks the viewer with an intriguing scenario; unfortunately, the story becomes progressively more unrealistic with just about all of the characters becoming incredible, particularly the lead detectives and their totally useless boss who never has anything helpful to say to his out-of- control subordinates. I feel sorry for these actors and I blame the writer for the tedious development of the story as it winds its way as a boring and far-too-long-drawn-out production. It could have been great but it earns just a 3 out of 10 because of it's excellent start, in spite of it's boring and slow continuance.

A woman escapes from a house in Bristol. At first the police are skeptical of her story but it turns out that she is Ivy Moxam, who was kidnapped 13 years ago at the age of 13. Now begins the task of reuniting with her family and friends and restarting her life. Meanwhile, the police are trying to catch her kidnapper, Mark White, but questioning Ivy makes the details of her kidnapping and imprisonment murkier and more inconsistent. Moreover, it appears that Ivy wasn't always a totally involuntary prisoner. Then Mark White kidnaps another girl…The plot to this series initially sounded similar to the movie Room, but this is different to Room in many ways. While Room concentrated on the mother and son and how they (especially the son) cope with life on the outside, Thirteen has more of a mystery drama feel to it. It does cover Ivy's having to adjust to life after 13 years of isolation, but it also covers to a very large extent the police's attempts to unravel what happened while she was imprisoned, their relationship with Ivy and their attempts at catching her kidnapper.Very intriguing, the mystery/crime-drama side, with a few good twists and turns. Even at the outset you aren't sure that she really is who she says she is, and later we start to think she may have been more accomplice than victim. This creates a wonderful greyness to Ivy's innocence, and fuels the intrigue.The human drama side is also done pretty well, though does feel a bit slow and clumsy at times. Reasonably emotional though.Solid performances all round. Jodie Comer is OK as Ivy, though doesn't really shine. The best performances probably come from Richard Rankin and Valene Kane as DI Carne and DS Merchant respectively.Great opening song - "In your dreams" by Dark Dark Dark. Well worth watching.