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There was no hostage drama, no cop wounded in the line of duty

SOMEONE'S a Bridget Jones fan. The deaths on this cop show have always tended to be grisly.

I guess the person has been murdered, and that is rarely done nicely.

But is there any real need to show the victim at the start of tonight's double episode being eaten by a bunch of cats?

And then followed by the poxy line: "That's why I'm a dog person?"

I mean seriously… and I know that's Channel 10's slogan, but are you even trying, scriptwriters?

Maybe it's their "up yours" to the world now that the show's been scaled back for 2011 — I guess, they did have the imagination to change the alsatians in Bridget Jones's Diary to cats…

I watched this season finale wondering how I felt about the show being slashed to a six-episode mini-series next year.

Would I miss it?

I've spent many a night at my grandma's having family dinners on a stable table watching this — we've been through tuna bakes, chops and even the odd chicken casserole together, surely I'd get some kind of a pang saying goodbye.

But the truth is, it's looking kind of, well, shabby.

Aaron Pedersen has never seemed comfortable in this, not really. If his character was any more wooden, I would call him Pinocchio.

Damien Richardson is in the same wooden boat.

And I'm sorry, but the woman from the coroner's officer will always be Barbara from Bank World for me now.

The scripting is clunky and the guest cast is trying too hard to impress.

I liked it better when Daniel MacPherson was in it.

He may be five foot nothing, but the boy sure can light up a screen.

Tonight's two episodes centre on the deaths of the cat-ravaged prostitute and a porn site owner, whose death is streamed on his own website.

It's all about women and power. Some have it taken away from them, some make choices about career versus love and others desperately try to get it.

Nadine Garner and Noni Hazlehurst are stoic in these final two eps, but I think it's fair to say the series has exhausted its appeal and the executioner is moving in.

Except in a plot perhaps stolen from Days of Our Lives, it will come back from the dead next year for six eps and be re-badged City Homicide: No Greater Honour.

I was hoping for a heroic last stand from the series finale, but there was no hostage drama, no cop wounded in the line of duty, no grand gestures or revelations.

No, it surrendered in the end, laying down its weapon rather than going out in a rain of bullets — obviously deciding life in prison is better than a spectacular, fighting death.

By Rebekah Devlin
November 24, 2010
The Courier-Mail