A decent cold case crime drama that is _majorly_ hampered by a thoroughly unlikable and unprofessional character in Peter Boyd (played by Trevor Eve, who doesn't appear to have ever met scenery that he wasn't happy to chew on). It's lucky they cast the ever-reliable Sue Johnston as Grace Foley, his number two, and the case-specific supporting casts were often filled with good actors. Worth watching if nothing better is on but I'm surprised it ran for as long as it did bearing in mind how awful Peter Boyd is. UPDATE: Having stuck with and now finished it, I would say that _Waking The Dead_ (unusually) got better in the later seasons - I think partly because Boyd became slightly less Boyd-like. I think the show would have benefited from more character development considering it ran for 9 series and yet we don't learn all that much about the main characters - [spoiler]especially Boyd, Grace, and Spencer who appear in it for the entire run[/spoiler].

Have to agree with Elliot. I'm at the end of S04 and I have to say the Boyd character is just oafish, corrupt, and very very unappealing. Sue is the bright light of this fairly interesting cold case prog. The multilayered stories are quite interesting even of they sometimes do not bear scrutiny well. Really I have not comes across such a gross character as Boyd and it is shocking the series survived so long with him barking nonsense non stop, but if you can get beyond that, there is some joy to be had from the story telling.