Screened over five days and likened to 'The Killing' (but by whom, we don't know) this had us thinking it was 'Midsomer Murders' at first. Every drama featuring an English village tradition has this curse, thanks to ITV.... The May Queen goes missing on her way to the parade and secrets start popping up like weeds after rain. This takes care to set up suspects from the start: one character chain-smokes and keeps away from his wife; another - a cop - has blood on his clothes and gets tetchy when his wife finds him having a shower and yet a third hides something in a bag in a cupboard and locks it up. As usual, a dog makes a find in the woods, but it's a sort of Well Dressing in the woods rather than a body. And as usual all the men seem to know that the supposedly innocent 14-year-old Hattie Sutton is anything but.
It's a bit odd that the men of the village form a search party and head straight to the woods, rather than following her supposed route by bicycle through the village, and unaccompanied by any police. There are a number of characters, whose relationships aren't yet clear (who's the guy on the screen?) so the next-day screenings are a good idea.
So far this feels like an uneasy mix of 'Midsomer' and Jez Butterworth's play of mythic truths 'Jerusalem'. We hope it coalesces into something more gripping than a standard whodunnit.
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