From Darkness

At an early point in this BBC1 Sunday-nighter, Claire Church (Anne-Marie Duff) tells her ex-boss DCI John Hind (Johnny Harris) that he's a walking cliche.  It's hard to disagree with her, and he's one of many.  A traumatic, unsolved case involving the serial murder of prostitutes in Manchester in 2000 sent the young DC Church to the faraway Western Isles, where she finds cold-water swimming, marathon training and a local single dad an easier proposition.  The discovery of a long-buried woman's body then sends the investigating officer after Claire, to find out what she knows about the case.  Despite her reluctance she is inevitably drawn back into the investigation, which looks to have claimed a new victim.

This feels like a composite of several previous ITV crime dramas, some more forgettable than others.  Claire's breakdown predictably had as much to do with her affair with her married boss as with modern-day Ripper killings.  His reasons for dragging her back to the past are clearly not professional (or likely, after 15 years), and if she's half the cop he keeps saying she is, then she'd know that too.  Whatever it was that attracted her to him isn't apparent in the present, and Harris plays him as a rather sleazy, pathetic character you can't imagine the intrepid Claire having any time for whatsoever.  This is partly thanks to Duff, of-course, who can always make the viewer care whether or not she makes it to the next episode.  We're not against less-than-cozy Sunday night offerings, but they need a bit more originality to keep us awake.

Parade's End

Ford Madox Ford's is a big tome and deserves a five-hour adaptation, with a good script and the best actors.  This is about as good on all counts as money can buy, and echoes the successful adaptation of Waugh's 'Sword of Honour', similarly about a decent man in an unhappy marriage who goes to war.

The only TWNH was that a member of the audience would fall asleep, but we're sorry to say that one of us did.  Why?  Well the sex was boring, as Sylvia (Rebecca Hall redefines 'shallow' in a great performance) would say.  The unpardonable lapse, though, was during a set-piece scene of a lunch.  It looked beautiful, and featured wonderful actors delivering witty lines impeccably, but overall it was underwhelming and slightly self-conscious.  No doubt things will improve when we reach the Great War (unlike 'Downton Abbey', but this is in a different league altogether) and it isn't as though it lacks pace, but the episode was concerned only with repressive, class-ridden pre-WWI society and felt very much like a light drawing-room comedy.  All the better to contrast with the grim conflict approaching and the post-war disillusion, but that is where the episodic structure reveals its flaws.

Those with more patience and energy, and fans of drawing-room comedies, will enjoy it all.