It was dreadful.
In all honesty, I have had mixed feelings about the series at the best of times. The cast was great but the writing and direction was always soapy, there was never any real tension, the supporting characters were always under developed, everyone was given to making long therapy speak speeches, the love triangle was unlikely and everyone was so wealthy without risk or effort that my thoughts would stray to class war. It was basically just millionaire house porn.
Also a lot of the characters were real wet blankets. Did any of you ever give a shit about the other two sisters? Not just in this episode but ever? Or the children? Or Christy, beyond a vague will he won't he? Did any of you feel the gaping absence of his character in this episode? No, because he didn't actually have a character. Did anyone watching feel any emotions at all when the drippy sisters drippy husband had a terrible accident and then got swiftly replaced by a drippy vicar?
The children were so uninteresting in the previous series that I couldn't even remember how many children had implausibly failed to turn up to their sister's wedding. To be honest, it took me a while to recall that Rose was not Nicola Walkers eldest daughter, but her sister.
However it plodded along for three series in an undemanding fashion. I played 'Guess how much the kitchen cost' and the cast is of a calibre that even tosh like this is, to some extent, watchable, though it always felt like a missed opportunity and I found myself wondering why they never renewed Silk. To say this jumped the shark with this Christmas special would be to entirely overstate the level of action. It subsided like a soggy Creme Catalan into an unappetising sugary syrup.
The faults were innumerable, from the MIA siblings to the doe eyed ex who is strangely callous towards his wife and two little children in London. There was the implausible meet cute of two lawyers who absolutely must have already known each other professionally. Not only because the London legal world is a small pond but because Hannah would have known the identity of the London law firm who drew up her daughter's pre nup. A contract dealing with property of that size would hardly have been a last minute negotiation, so she would have spent months going back and forth. There was the arrival of the Mistress, then the weird handling of the mistress, the FIL's and then the MIL's and then all the guests the next day meekly accepting the mistress showing up at the son's wedding. And then staying for breakfast after making a scene and nobody says nuffin.
There was the groom who runs away from his fiancée, sits on a rock all night and is then welcomed back by his fiancée and her entire family in spite of the fact he's been a total dick. Not to mention the English lawyer who draws up a Spanish divorce with a vast property, a family business and a multi million pound fortune to dispose of, in a single morning in the middle of a cancelled wedding with a manhunt for a missing person going on.
I mean, what the hell was all that?