The first thing to say about this production is that it is beautiful to look at, especially in UHD. The dreaming spires of Oxford are without doubt the stars of the show. Unfortunately, although the visuals are breathtaking, the editing is clunky and the writing cliched and lacking in the intensity of the - rather intrusive at times - soundtrack.

Matthew Goode is well, good. He's perfectly cast and has all the mannerisms and snark that you would expect of a vampire. Teresa Palmer unfortunately, although she does her best with her stilted dialogue simply isn't believable as an internationally acclaimed academic. The problem with being introduced as the youngest person ever to obtain tenure at Yale, is that you need to act and speak with a level of intelligence and authority that makes this real. Palmer just doesn't have the delivery or the gravitas required, as demonstrated in one of her earliest scenes when she delivers a lecture which sounds like it was written by a teenager who forgot to do their homework and dashed something off 10 minutes before class.

The main problem however, is that the opening episode simply tries to do too much too quickly. This would have worked so well as a slow burner, where the characters slowly reveal themselves over the first few hours of the show and we learn about their struggles with the identities they hold. Instead we are spoonfed everything in the first 30 minutes with awful, rushed exposition as the main characters all but point at each other and say "You're a witch", "And you're a vampire" in the most hamfisted attempt to get things moving forward.

I've never read the books, so I can't comment on the quality of the source material, but I can only assume that given the luxury of several hundred pages the story unwinds in a careful, intelligent and well paced manner. It's a shame that the creators of this show didn't take the same approach.