TV review: Horses, wagons, baddies and wild west scenery — but no chemistry in The English

One character, Eli, has over-cooked the strong and silent type, and is basically like a rock on horseback

The English on BBC Two: has a superb cast including Ciarán Hinds, Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer

Clint Eastwood’s 1992 movie, Unforgiven, changed my mind about westerns. Up until then, a western was something that made my father talk about going to the cinema in Kinsale during the 1940s. The baddies were cartoonish and there was too much footage of cattle running through the scrub. And then Unforgiven came along with an amazing cast, three-dimensional characters, genuine chemistry between the actors, and a bit of a laugh along the way.

I thought The English (BBC TWO, Thursday) might pull off the same trick, and refresh the western for a new generation. It doesn’t.