Nightsleeper dubbed 'total disaster' by BBC viewers after premiere

What did you miss?

After the gripping, high-tension Sherwood came to an end last week, the 9pm Sunday BBC slot has been replaced with… well, another gripping, high-tension thriller.

For CBBC writer Nick Leather, the kid gloves were well and truly off as he returned to his spine-chilling roots with this intriguing mini-series. As the name implies, Nightsleeper centres around a sleeper train from Glasgow to London; the twist being that this train is subsequently hacked in a terrorist cyberattack by the mysterious ‘Driver’.

It’s up to copper Joe (Joe Cole) and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) director Abby (Alexandra Roach) to save the day, but what did viewers make of episode 1 of the drama? Please be advised that this article contains spoilers for episode 1 of the show.

What, how, and why?

In the first episode of Nightsleeper, Abby’s holiday was quite literally derailed as reports of a strange cyber virus began to sweep the UK. Meanwhile, Joe the copper is quite literally fighting crime as he pursues a bag thief. The drama is then taken up a notch after it becomes apparent that the eponymous sleeper train is in the grips of a cyber-terrorist attack.

But as this all unfolded, viewers were a little less than impressed. Taking to X to pen their thoughts, one described the series as “a total disaster — and not in the intended way.”

“The script is wooden, the characters cliched, the casting poor, the plot is not credible,” the X user added, while a second weighed in, calling the series “amateurish." Similarly, a third user dubbed the show "horrendous."

But the final nail in the coffin for viewers was when, seemingly out of nowhere, Joe and Abby start singing Kate Nash’s ‘Foundations’ to one another over the phone.

“Are they really singing Kate Nash when the train is in impending doom?” one user asked incredulously, “I had high hopes for this.” While another wrote: “Who among us can honestly say they've never had a jokey singalong to a Kate Nash song when caught up in a deadly terrorist attack?”

A third viewer was more charitable with their comments, noting: “Whoever is mocking Nightsleeper because there was Kate Nash sing-a-long in a serious situation does not understand the millennials of Britain."

"If a serial killer called out ‘Sean Paul’ while we were hiding, we would still call back with ‘and Blu Cantrelll’.”

What else did viewers say?

While viewers overall didn’t seem to be a fan of the show, it did provide an opportunity for Brits to do what they do best: have a moan at the National Rail system.

“I'm already struggling with Nightsleeper based on how far from reality the following things are,” one viewer shared. “1. The train is so fancy; 2. There's not a replacement bus service on.” While a second viewer joked that they “think the big plot twist no one is expecting is that the train turns up on time to Euston.”

“Put a few leaves on the track,” a third quipped, “That will stop it.”

Nightsleeper airs every Sunday at 9pm on BBC One. You can also catch the whole series now on BBC iPlayer.

This article originally appeared on Yahoo TV UK at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nightsleeper-viewers-unimpressed-231406238.html