pdhutch *** Warning --- spoilers ahead!!****This is my first review, not only on IMDb, but on any site of a TV show. But I had so many thoughts about this that I had to get them out and say something. I discovered this show a few weeks ago on Britbox and for the most part, am so glad that I did! I'm going to sound like so many reviewers on here. Seasons 1-3 were just wonderful. It was delightful to watch them. I actually looked forward to coming home and watching an episode each night, as they were both relaxing but also challenged some of your thinking. What I enjoyed so much about these three seasons is that none of these characters are perfect -- but in essence, they are good. This is very hard to do with TV shows, in my opinion. Dr. Bramwell is a generally well-meaning person who truly wants to help people, but can also be snobbish, judgmental and even unkind. That being said, you can sympathize with where she is in life and what she hopes to accomplish. It was awesome seeing a strong, smart, independent woman doctor here. She made mistakes --- sometimes bad ones --- but for me, that made her character even more relatable and human. The characters on this show are complex and go far beyond being Victorian clichés. The end of season three was for me, the loveliest part of the show. You didn't know what might happen next, but it was handled in such a great way. As other reviewers have said, it's my opinion that the show should have ended there. And then....there was season 4. I just got finished watching and I'm going back and forth between disappointed, angry and kind of sad. I don't really invest that much time or emotion into TV shows, but I enjoyed this one, and to see it come crashing down like that was hugely disappointing. I understand, I think, what the writers might have been trying to do and I appreciate that --- Victorian London could be an incredibly difficult and awful place for some, and Dr. Bramwell's fierce determination to find Dora is commendable. My problem is the complete and utter change of tone, style and intent on the part of the characters. There's nothing wrong with keeping a certain amount of consistency with TV characters. Shows make us think, but they can also provide a sense of comfort. To make such drastic changes was baffling. If the writers had decided from Season 1 to film the show this way, with this different tone, I would have understood. I may not have liked it as much, but at least I would have understood what kind of mood they were going for. Dr. Bramwell, though her cause to find Dora might have been worthy, quite frankly becomes insufferable, and I hate what they did with Dr. Marsham. I felt like I was watching an entirely different show. I think, like others, I'm just going to pretend I didn't see season 4 and imagine that the show ends in season 3. It will leave me with much happier memories of this show!

screenidol The first three seasons, with all the flaws and occasional unnecessary emotional outbursts, make for a good series, one that develops reasonably well over the time period. I'll give it an 8. The end of the third season works as a good ending for the series, though admittedly, one wants to see a bit more. Especially how the warm but sometimes conflicting relationship between Drs. Bramwell and Marsham develops. Warning! If you've read the other reviews, you've heard this before: Do not watch season four! Heed this warning. The Bramwell-Marsham connection turns sour and bitter. The elder Bramwell, now married, is never seen again. Young Sidney, helper in the Thrift, is gone and the building itself is completely different. Nurse Carr becomes mean-spirited. And Eleanor goes off the deep end, abandoning the true nature of the Thrift to (unsuccessfully) take on the cause of child prostitution, longing to marry the military man who seems to represent everything she has been fighting against from the beginning; the relationship is totally unbelievable. Worst of all, the drivel this fourth series calls a story lasts for more than an hour and a half for each of the two painfully dark episodes in this abbreviated season. And the credits shown here on IMDb seem to indicate that the writer is the series creator and most prolific contributor, and the director(s) have done shows in other seasons. What happened?! The direction is abysmal, the photography horrendous, and the interludes of terrible music are completely incongruous and inappropriate. With every extreme closeup (I think at one time Eleanor's one eye and mouth filled the entire screen), with every strange angle of the camera, with every scene too dark to see yet creating no mood or ambiance, I kept asking, "What were they thinking? Who did this? Why???!" There is no good cheer or humor in the entire fourth season, yet there is nothing that involves us or informs us -- other than the overall message that life was tough then and woman and children were exploited, which was handled well enough in the first three seasons. Now, instead, we get religious overtones and a preachiness that could sour the devout. All in all, the fourth season was unrecognizable, from the storyline to the directing to the sets to the music. Even the acting was barely acceptable, and one has to wonder how the three leads who pushed on in a final season felt about their new characters. Since I give both episodes in season 4 a "1", I am forced to bring the show's rating down to "5"; best bet is to ignore the 4th season and take the first three, worth a healthy and hearty "8".

sherry-86-950063 This is an exceedingly hard series to rate because the first three seasons are so terrific and the fourth is unaccountably bad. First season deserves the 9 stars I gave it. I would seriously only give the last season one--half it they'd let me. Do yourself, Eleanor and the other characters a favour and resist the temptation to watch the fourth season.The first three seasons are interesting, well composed period pieces of life in Victorian London. Story lines focus on an intelligent, educated young woman and her widowed father. Both are doctors. At the time women doctors were an anomaly. The class and sex divisions of that society are depicted in interesting detail throughout the series as Eleanor moves from a hospital position, dabbles in middle class general practice and goes on to become head of a free infirmary in the slums of the city.Jemma Redgrave and the other actors are simply excellent. The casting director is to be commended. The third season ends at a good point, but the series is so well done you naturally want more. Resist if you can that tempting fourth season. It is a poison apple.Apparently the Pod People visited the set in the third-fourth season hiatus, taking over the bodies and minds of both cast and crew. The last two tedious episodes are imitations of bad art-house fare--darkly lit, with unnaturally bright lighting on certain characters' faces. Intrusive, annoying and at times downright weird music. Eleanor's devoted father and other ongoing major characters apparently were abducted by our alien visitors, for they are nowhere to be seen. The Men in Black must have visited the Thrift (Eleanor's slum-based infirmary) because there's not a mention of them or the fact the Thrift appears to be an entirely different building (with several new floors!)in the same place it always was.Worst of all is the fact that the characters we've come to love, with all their warts and bumps, have been replaced by automatons bearing the same names and clothing. It was of passing interest to see an actress as good as Jemma Redgrave tackle the role of an entirely new (and unlikeable) character with only a name in common with the person she'd portrayed so beautifully in the past.Do not sully the memory of these people by watching the last season. You'll only regret it. Your time will be better spent looking up Jemma Redgrave in IMDb to see her other work. That's where I'm going next.

evso I have followed "Bramwell" since I started watching the mini-series on PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" a few years ago. The depiction of a female doctor in Victorian England is very entertaining and groundbreaking. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in period drama or the history of medical practice.