Hit Over the Head
Gwen (Sarah Lancaster - Living with the Enemy) is a struggling single mum, trying to cover her mounting bills, working full time, taking a night class in real estate and dealing with her pushy mother who thinks she should find a new man. Whilst not looking for romance it seems to find her when the handsome Ed (Drew Waters - The Hit List) comes to her rescue when she suffers a flat tire. With her friend, Sidney (Natalia Cigliuti - Kill Speed), helping out with her son Gwen and Ed start dating. But what Gwen doesn't know is nothing is what it seems and she needs to be careful who she trusts.
I guess I may be nearing my limit of acceptance when it comes to modern TV movies because as I sat down to watch "The Preacher's Mistress", which is also known as "A Woman Betrayed", my expectations were quickly lowered. The trouble is that "The Preacher's Mistress" is simply far too obvious and within minutes of the set up being put into place you can already second guess certain things are going to happed. What is worse is that it then tells you that things are not as they seem as those Gwen trusts act duplicitly.
Now for some serving the story up on a plate won't be a problem as they will enjoy the romantic camera work and the beautiful cast either looking romantic or staring at the camera with their best looks of skulduggery. But it really annoyed me, it almost felt like they should have put captions up to say spoiler alert when we get told another thing about certain characters and how they end up connecting. Don't get me wrong as eventually we need to know the stuff but not in the first 20 minutes because it steals away much of the mystery and makes "The Preacher's Mistress" more about the look and the beautiful people which becomes incredibly cheesy because of its manufactured perfect romance styling.
The upshot of this, the focus on the look rather than the intrigue, is that the characters say unnatural things, do unbelievable things and that means the acting comes across as terrible. The words subtle do not seem to exist in "The Preacher's Mistress" and at times the acting comes across like you are being hit over the head with a sledgehammer.
What this all boils down to is that "The Preacher's Mistress" just didn't do it for me because it was as subtle as brick. Time and again it served up everything on a plate and with that the intrigue is all but wiped out only to be replaced by manufactured characters and pretty camera work.
