Must Watch reviews: The Dark, Elle, and Little House on the Prairie

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Ali Plumb join Naga Munchetty to review ‘The Dark’, ‘Elle’ and ‘Little House on the Prairie’.

What do the Must Watch reviewers make of them?

The Dark is a Scandi-noir style detective show about the hunt for a serial killer in the Scottish Highlands. It's adapted from the novel From The Shadows by G. R. Halliday, and stars Mark Rowley, Emun Elliott, Helen Baxendale and Laura Donnelly as Detective Monica Kennedy.

Hayley thinks The Dark is a Must Watch whilst Ali thinks it is a good watch, rather than a Must Watch.

Hayley says, “this is for me. You know I love miserable, tired female detectives. The bigger the eye bags, the frizzier the hair, the more I love it. I also love it when the detective wears a big jumper, because I'm a very simple person.”

“It is a lot creepier than the usual ITV detective drama. Stylistically, it looks more like a Scandi crime thing.”

She thinks the show is “above” similar ITV detective shows.

However, she does criticise some of the writing and says the pathologist character has “some of the silliest lines I've heard in a TV show”.
But Hayley enjoys “the cold dark misery” of the show and says she will watch the rest.

Ali says, “it is very misty and just utterly gorgeous in a way that I adore. I was so happy to be in the company of these people who really just crack on with a job and are quite grumpy.”

“It's sort of horror-ish. This isn't one of those light serial killer shows. It's not cosy.”

He thinks there is “good action” in the first episode which sets the show up to be “spooky”.

“I also enjoy a show where you get quite confused quite quickly. I'll find out, I know I'll find out, but what on earth is going on.”

All episodes of The Dark are available now on ITVX.

The second review is Elle on Prime Video, which is a prequel to the Legally Blonde films, set in 1995. In this era, Elle is 16 years old and uprooted from her glamorous LA life and forced to move to Seattle. It is basically the same concept as the films: The very pink-obsessed Elle has to make it work in a world that doesn't understand her whole deal.

Ali and Hayley do not think Elle is a Must Watch.

Ali says, “Lexi Minetree plays the young Elle, and she is very, very, very good. She's unbelievably spot on. The voice is just right. The energy is perfect.”

“In the original film she goes to Harvard to study law and she's never had her pink perfect Barbie-like life ever interrupted by anything that got in her way.”

But he thinks, in comparison, the TV show doesn’t work because Elle moving to Seattle invalidates that premise.

“More than anything else, it's not funny. Legally Blonde is a full-on comedy but this is just a bit of a slog.”

“June Diane Raphael, who is exceptionally funny in almost everything she's in, she plays Elle's mom and I adored her. She got the memo that it was a comedy. Everyone else? Not so much.”

Hayley says, “while the film was unusual and funny and incredibly camp, this is just a kind of generic teen film with generic characters.”

“It is so uneven tonally that you can't even really fall into a kind of nostalgia trance because someone will be slightly too current and drag you out of it.”

She thinks June Diane Raphael and Tom Everett Scott, who play Elle’s parents, are great.

“It just becomes this basic high school thing with basic high school characters and problems. I don't think the charm of the original idea can carry it through all the clichés and the drudgery.”

You can watch all episodes of Elle on Prime Video now.

Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is the latest adaptation of the book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The original classic TV series aired for nine seasons from 1974 to 1983 and there have also been films and a musical. It follows the Ingalls family, Charles, Caroline, and their daughters Mary and Laura, as they leave Wisconsin to settle on the American frontier.

Hayley and Ali do not think Little House on the Prairie is a Must Watch.

Ali says, “this is not a Must Watch, but I did find myself enjoying it for what it is worth.”

“We have new, very charming, very good looking people who are taking over the roles of the Ingalls.”

He describes the show as “a pleasant time with pleasant people.”

“I love that it's an adaptation of the books and they're obviously taking more and drawing it out a bit more.”

Overall Ali calls Little House on the Prairie a “perfectly pleasant Sunday afternoon distraction.”

On the other hand, Hayley says, “I have such a huge bias against anything Little House on the Prairie because it haunted my TV set when I was a kid.”

“I tried, I really did. I tried for two episodes, but I cannot abide a little girl looking over a field where her new house is about to be built saying things like ‘this will be our new forever’.”

She calls it “cosy nonsense” adding, “it's completely not for me.”

“As Ali says, it seems serviceable in terms of a TV show.”

Hayley does note “it's been brought slightly up to date as much as a show can be brought up to date, set in that time.”

All eight episodes are available to watch now on Netflix.

Listen to the full reviews of all three programmes on BBC Sounds.

But before all that, why not contact Must Watch with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

We used AI to transcribe and summarise our Must Watch feature. This article was then written and reviewed by a BBC journalist. More on how the BBC uses AI.