Outcasts, BBC drama

Has anyone else been watching Outcasts on BBC 1? Set at some point in the future (cleverly they've avoided giving it a year date so far from what I've noticed) Humanity is fleeing a desperate and brutal Earth, only the finest, the brightest are sent out to what is to become humanity's new home Carpathia (named after the ship that saved the Titanic survivors) to etch out a new life on this distant rock (it takes 5 years or so for a "lander" to make it from Earth to Carpathia)

It's got a good cast in it, Jamie Bamber (famous for playing Apollo in Battlestar Galactica), Hermione Norris (famous for playing MI-6 agent Ros in Spooks), Eric Mabius (Resident Evil Movie and Cruel Intentions) to name a few of it's star characters. However critics have slated it citing that it's boring and dull, I'm not so sure if it is, though it's a 8 part series and so far it seems, 4 episodes in that 8 episodes is going to be far too few to explain any of the story arc's going on at present. Though it has proved to give a surprise twist where one of the best and biggest actors in the show has been killed off in the very first episode. (SPOILER)Jamie Bamber's character is killed in episode 1, this is a big surprise since his turn at playing Apollo in BSG showed just how damn good an actor he is, it left me feeling that some of the remaining cast were eclipsed too much by the bigger names in the show, certainly the actors playing Cass and Fluer (2 of the central characters) seem to be eclipsed in any scene where they are with Hermione Norris or Eric Mabius. I could easily have seen the actor playing Cass swapped out for Jamie Bamber and instead playing the role Jamie Bamber played in episode 1 as having worked better. So far the story seems to be setting up well but it certainly will need to move faster to explain things. The biggest concern I have is that they will rush the "tying up of plot arcs" in to the last 2 episodes or else leave too much hanging on for series 2 which may not come until next year which could just be too far away for anyone to give a crap about the show.

So who has seen any of this and what were their thoughts on the show?