Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Band of Gold

Top positive review

Excellent as a gritty drama on the lives of prostitutes, not quite as strong as a thriller

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 22, 2012

Intelligent if slightly awkward melding of a gritty, sad drama of life of the street for working class
prostitutes in the UK, and a somewhat more melodramatic and soapy (if sometimes quite tense)
serial killer thriller.

Unlike `Klute' where the world of hustling and thriller melded seamlessly, here there is a bit more
schizophrenia between the elements. For me, the crime sections, while sometimes effective, were
also quite familiar, and felt like TV and movies I'd seen many times before, whereas the portrait of
the day to day lives of hustlers felt like much more interesting and less often explored in a
non-exploitive way. The killings and investigation feel oddly grafted on.

4 people found this helpful

Top critical review

All critical reviews›

uneven, unrealistic, unpleasant

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 6, 2016

This "series" ran for 3 seasons in Britain. Or ran for three "series," i.e., three years. It can get confusing, because what we call a "season" in the U.S. is called a "series" in Britain. In any event, it ran three years, six episodes per year. So this box set contains 18 episodes total.

It's an uneven show. Some scenes are gritty and mean-spirited. Sometimes the show tries to be heart-rending and heartfelt. Then at times it's more of a comedic farce.

You have a former prostitute who loves her grandkids, and is terrified of losing them. Other prostitutes with kids, whom they love. Another who's trying to track down the kid she gave up for adoption. Some of these prostitutes try to form a cleaning business. A serial killer prostitute, whom we're supposed to sympathize with, because her father abused her as a child.

Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) is in eight of the episodes She plays a dominatrix. She veers from cold, to quirky, to loving, to friendly, to business-like, to tear-struck. No emotional consistency. Ditto most of the other characters.

Headey's dominatrix is in love with a prostitute, who commits suicide. Soon thereafter, Headey is making goofy faces in a kareoke bar, as if she has not a care in the world. Sometimes Headey smokes opium in a public restroom. Other times she's all cleaned up, looking pure and innocent. Overall, her character looks too clean. No signs of living a hard, drugged-addicted life on the streets -- although her character allegedly ran away from home at age 12, and has been living on the streets for, oh, the past 10 years.

There's a nasty, borderline psycho cop who's insanely in love/hate with a prostitute played by Cathy Tyson (who seems to be replaying the character she played in Mona Lisa. Tyson's prostitute, like Headey's, is all over the emotional map. At times Tyson appears to be acting in a serious drama. Then when a former client leaves her money, Tyson acts all goofy and silly, as if she were in a sitcom version of Pretty Woman. Especially farcical is how the dead client's nephew tries to legally void the Will by entrapping Tyson in sordid acts, and Tyson's wacky retributions. Then she suddenly stops being selfish and materialistic, and defends the rights of working girls, as though she were in Norma Rae.

Another prostitute is a mean-spirited thing, until she's unexpectedly recruited to be a social worker. Then she's all public-spirited, sacrificing for the good of others.

There are a couple of shocking murders (filmed as serious drama), followed by farcical attempts to hide the body. Ha ha.

I guess there's supposed to be a feminist theme that runs through this show. The men are worse than the women. We're supposed to root for the prostitutes, but they're a pretty sordid, unpleasant bunch. Which should clue you in as to how sordid the men are. (Corrupt cops, child molesters, sadistic clients, violent pimps, murderous ex-husbands, etc.) If you're a man, and you want to see how horrible you are, this is a good show to watch. If women are awful, then bad men are to blame. Women, no matter how criminal or deceitful or violent, are victims of male malevolence.

I did learn some English terms. In Britain, a John is called a Punter. And a Pimp is called a Ponce.

This is an overall ugly series, with uneven, unrealistic characters. No, I've never known a prostitute, or a pimp, or even a social worker or a cop. But I assume that, like all human beings, they each have some emotional consistency. Which is widely lacking among the characters of this series. The tone and themes of the show are all over the map. Of course, I don't blame the actors. The writers and directors are to blame.

One person found this helpful

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From the United States

Bob G.

Felony Religionist Demonstrations

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2018

Demonstrations of the criminal abuses inflicted on hetero citizens by the felony tax evading, slave mongering, hate mongering against male citizens, war mongering for purposes of "sacrificing" yet more male lives in foreign wars created for the purpose, male baby raping, belligerent blaspheming "religion" gangs. Those unwilling to be feloniously enslaved in their "marriage" fraudocracy, which in the vast majority of instances is but a precursor to felony thefts of male resources in the divorce racketeering industry, are prevented from organizing physically safe environments for males and females to meet and engage in consensual relationships. Even the former places of worship of hetero religion in Nevada, the last state complying with Article I of the US Constitution Amendments "freedom to practice" one's own religion, were shut down with terrorist homosexist medifraud object rape con dumbs circa 1986-87 by the felony religionists Ronny Raygun and Bush the Elder. A criminal purpose mockery featuring Phil Donahue was published after the onset of the feloniously abrogative attacks against hetero religion in which the viciously destructive object rape of males with con dumbs was extolled as being "safe sex" and a major place of worship was desecrated by allowing a lesbian criminal to take OWNERSHIP of a male citizen in the felony religionists' fraud of divorce racketeering. These British demonstration episodes do nothing to alleviate the generalized criminal abuse of heteros intended and perpetrated by those felony tax evading "religion" gangs. Since they are basically supportive of organized crime's felonious abrogations of hetero human and civil rights, these episodes could not rise above a one star rating.

One person found this helpful

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From other countries

mlc

Waste money

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

Not work in DVD. Keeps stop start playing. Waste money

Patrick T.

One Star

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

Perfect

One person found this helpful

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‹ See all details for Band of Gold

5 star		79%
4 star		9%
3 star		6%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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