Review by John Delia
A snappy little comedy/drama No Offense reminds a bit of TV’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but with less humor and more action. The series has a lot of serious overtones with some excellent creative episodes that are compelling. The series will have you binging several chapters or even more if you have the time. The characters have love and hate changing attitudes throughout the 16.5 hours of police angst and power struggles. You’ll get to know the main players in chapter one of season one and follow them as they risk their lives, solve crimes, commit errors and find that love and job commitment do not go hand in hand.
It’s Manchester England and the police office is settling in for the day. Wait I’m getting ahead of the story. The night before the day at the office Detective Constable Dinah Kowalska (Elaine Cassidy) is getting wasted at a local pub. Sharing a cab with another the two are annoying each other when Dinah sees a suspect she has been looking for walking down the street. Getting out of the cab she chases the man, but as bad luck would have it, the perp gets run over by a bus. Now it’s the next morning and Dinah is the butt of the other detective’s jokes. It just so happens that up and coming Detective Constable Joy Freers (Alexandra Roach) and her are both in line for Detective Sergeant and it has become an unsettling situation, especially since last night’s “fatal†mistake.
Running the department is Inspector DI Vivienne Deering (Joanna Scanlan) and she’s going to make the decision. Even though Dinah is the natural choice having more time in as a police officer, she’s not a favorite of Deering. The decision made, the two get the same promotion to the chagrin of the whole department of male fuzz. So begins a series of situation comedy and situation drama that keeps the lady fuzz on their toes as competition from the males creates a hell raising competition for bringing in the bad guys.
What also makes this a winner are the performances by the leads as they constantly go from heroes to zeros and back on top again to start all over. I especially like Joanna Scanlan as the chief who reminds me of Melissa McCarthy, always delivering a few zingers assigning the duties. Her Deering may not be perfect, but she sure has a lot of friends in high places and knowledge of corruption on her side.
Elaine Cassidy does a great job of being the determined cop who gets her man, even if it may not be a good thing in the eyes of her boss. She’s the toughest of the three and she flaunts it, but she’s also having to prove herself to stay on the force. As for Alexandra Roach as Joy she’s all sweet and dutiful, but don’t mistake her for a wuss when it comes to dealing with baddies. She may be self-challenging yet a very cop smart.
BONUS FEATURES:
“Meet the Cast and Crewâ€
“Deleted Scenes from Series 1â€
No Offense: The Complete Collection has not been rated as a TV series, but does contain prurient language and violence so think of it as TV-MA. Be cautious when deciding to allow immature children see the series as it does have some scenes that are inappropriate for youngsters.
FINAL ANALYSIS: A very good series that mixes situation comedy with crime drama. (3.5 out of 5 Stars)
Specifications and additional video information:
Cast: Joanna Scanlan, Elaine Cassidy, Alexandra Roach, Will Mellor, Paul Ritter, Colin Salmon, Sarah Solemani, Claire Rushbrook and Lisa McGrillis
Created by: Paul Abbott
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
MPAA Rating: Not Rated, vulgar language, violence
Running Time: 16.5 hours
Video Release Date: March 3, 2020
Language: English
Reviewed Format: DVD
Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
Video: Widescreen 16×9
Subtitles: English SDH
Number of Discs: 7 Disc Set with 21 episodes
Released on: DVD and ACORN TV for streaming