Remember 'The Sixth Sense'? "I see dead people." If the boy had somehow grown up to be Stellan Skarsgard and become a UK detective, this would be his continuing story. DI John River is accompanied by his recently deceased Sergeant 'Stevie' Stevenson (Nicola Walker, also pleasing the crowds in 'Unforgotten' over on ITV). Stevie straightens him out, jollies him up and keeps him going. Sadly for River, he also manages to accrue the ghost of the young man he suspected of Stevie's killing, whom he has chased to his death from a tower block balcony. He wants his name cleared. Then there's the subject of the book River is reading, one Thomas Neill Cream (Eddie Marsan), the Lambeth Poisoner, who hanged for his crimes in 1892 and imparts his macabre philosophy.
Given his array of dead head-friends, it's amazing he manages any work at all, but his boss, DCI Chrissie Read (Lesley Manville) states that his clear-up rate is 80%. That could of-course be down to the fact that the victim drops by to give him a nudge, as in this week's case of a girl whose boyfriend is accused of her murder.
It's sad and it's funny. There's a matter-of-factness about the talking dead for River, while his interactions with the living at work force you to remember that he's in danger of a breakdown. In fact, talking dead aside, the main TWNH is that even solving 80% of cases wouldn't save him from an enforced period of rest when colleagues have witnessed him talking to and even punching people who don't exist. Morgan's writing can be great, so we're hoping for something of substance. There are comparisons to Scandi noir, but this is no 'Wallander' or 'The Killing', and none the worse for that. We were reminded in his recall of his late colleague of the scenes of Craven and his murdered daughter in 'Edge of Darkness'. If it maintains the edge, rather than skipping into vacuous light or tumbling wholesale into darkness, this could be among the best dramas this year.
Honorary mention for Adeel Akhtar as Rivers' new DS, Ira King. He was so good as Wilson Wilson in 'Utopia', we were shocked to see him with two good eyes.
A bit like a longer, more-involved 'Waking the Dead'... and featuring two of its stars (Trevor Eve and Claire Goose), this begins with the discovery of a skeleton by builders and follows the investigation by dogged cop DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and her glum DS, Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) into the fate and identity of the remains. Simultaneously, we are shown the lives of some families who, as becomes apparent in the last scene, are in some way linked to the murdered man.
It's gripping. Walker and Bhaskar are a genuis pairing, and both are watchable in just about anything. The supporting cast are stellar - Bernard Hill, Gemma Jones and Tom Courtenay to name three - and you sense an all-too-human tragedy lurking in the past and waiting to be dug up with the victim's body.
Any drawbacks? Cases in real life do turn on amazing luck and tiny clues, but this is sailing close to the TWNH wind in the connections made so far. (They could identify the car from a key found nearby; it only had one owner; it has survived since 1965; there was a bag in the boot!; there's a dated diary in the bag!; the ink is rendered legible by a forensic process! etc.) We're hoping that with the names of the other characters being foiund within it, no further coincidences need happen. Please.
You can't claim the title's misleading. Not Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and arguably the most romantic city in the world: Derek Jacobi, Anne Reid and rainy Yorkshire. What it lacks in Lurpak, however, it makes up for with a warm, sharp script and a couple of promising sub-plots involving their children's families. Oh and a car chase.
Good to know there are strong roles roles for older women that allow more subtle characterisation than Sarah Lancashire's recent role in 'The Paradise', or Anne Reid's in 'Upstairs, Downstairs'. Both of them shine here, as does Nicola Walker. Good also to know that there are still dramas made to engage an older audience, besides 'New Tricks'.
What do you do if your son's schoolmate is found killed and you find a pair of stained trainers under his bed? Assume he's the killer while saying nothing at all about it, according to the latest offering from ITV. Only in soapland are things this absurd. "Did you do the washing?" asks mum Rosie (Hermione Norris) in a knowing way, before scouring the web and buying hydrogen peroxide to see if it fizzed when in contact with the suspect trainers. The boy, Jamie (Alexander Arnold) has been acting strangely, moping about, possibly peeping at his mum's boyfriend's daughter Jess (Antonia Clarke) in the shower and downloading dodgy videos onto his laptop. And there we were thinking that was typical behaviour for a teenage boy....
It's hard not to think that a top calibre cast (Martin Clunes as Rosie's boyfriend Ben and Jake Davies as his son Rob add to the good work here) could do so much more with a script centred around how a family copes with juvenile violence and criminality than they can with a ridiculously drawn-out 'did he/didn't he' scenario.
Mum eventually confides in her ex-husband, Jamie's natural father David (Paul McGann), but not before we'd shouted ourselves hoarse: "Just ASK him, you daft woman!" Ex-hubby asks why she hasn't mentioned it to their son. She says he's too fragile after the divorce to handle being suspected. Because, obviously, the only way to broach the subject would be to say: "Did you kill that girl?!" No wonder DC Upton (Nicola Walker) and the victim's mother Kay (Annabelle Apsion) look dazed and confused.
Was it only us who felt let down by the ending after enjoying every gripping minute?
The performances by Steven Mackintosh, Nicola Walker, Kierston Wareing, Ashley Walters and Warren Brown alone were worth the licence fee, and it could and should provide a masterclass in how to structure a serialised drama. It just seemed like they didn't know what to do with the titular Inside Men at the end. Would Chris forgive the man who admits he would have killed him, letting him give him a lift home? Are Marcus and Gina meant to 'fess all, except their willing involvement, to the police and get away with a few hundred thousand? And John, whose transition from mouse to lion wasn't ever quite true, gives up his freedom and the money?
