This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 5 November 2016.
Dark Angel: Monday, STV
Humans: Sunday, Channel 4
ITV
has dramatised so many real-life crime and murder cases over the years, it’s
all but exhausted the 20th century as a gruesome source of
inspiration.
Hence,
one presumes, the arrival of two-part death carnival Dark Angel, starring Joanne Froggatt (dutiful housemaid Anna from Downton Abbey) as 19th
century serial murderer Mary Ann Cotton. This is truly horrible history.
From
1865 to 1872, Cotton cut a poisonous swathe through the North East of England,
murdering several husbands – and possibly eleven of her 13 children – for their
life insurance policies.
In
the hands of writer Gwyneth Hughes, she was initially portrayed as a sympathetic
figure mired in poverty and struggling to raise a family while her first
husband scraped a paltry living at sea.
But
our sympathies soon waned when she discovered the swift and painful properties
of arsenic.
A
fine, intelligent actress, Froggatt pitched her performance astutely. The – to
say the least – morally wayward nature of her character was rendered more
chilling by her decision to adopt the gentle North East tones of Sarah
Millican.
Froggat’s
Cotton wasn’t depicted as a leering maniac, but rather as a coldly pragmatic,
manipulative killer who wasn’t beyond feeling guilt for her actions. However,
those occasional pangs of conscience couldn’t dissuade her from a cruel and
perverse mission to climb the social ladder.
No
one suspected foul play when her family members coincidentally died in vomit
and faeces-stained agony, because Victorian society couldn’t even begin to
entertain the notion that a woman would be capable of such crimes.
By
the end of episode one, she’d dispatched two hapless husbands, two children and
her own mother. No wonder the blue-grey colour palette looked so depressed.
It
may not be the most compelling study of a psychopath you’ll ever see, but Dark Angel is a suitably bleak and
low-key account of an overlooked chapter in British criminal history. Seldom
have the words “Let’s make you a nice cup of tea” been delivered with such an
impending sense of doom.
A
deserved hit for Channel 4, series one of Humans
was one of the most thoughtful and intelligently-realised sci-fi dramas of
recent years.
Based
in a near-future Britain where lifelike androids – or synths – are employed as
unquestioning slaves within the service industries, it managed to combine all the
usual philosophical quandaries of A.I. fiction with an overarching conspiracy
narrative and an effective domestic setting.
But
where to go from there? In attempting to broaden the scope of this world, the
first episode of series two was a globe-trotting muddle in which far too many
strands competed for our attention.
The
relatively small-scale drama of series one has been replaced by an overly busy
stew of disjointed ideas. It’ll hopefully settle down and regain focus soon,
but this was a textbook example of how not to begin a new series.
Or
perhaps it’s because I’m beginning to suspect that I don’t particularly care
about the fate of our rag-tag group of sentient synths and their voyage of
self-discovery, and preferred Humans
when it was the story of a dysfunctional family struggling to cope with the
introduction of a synth into their lives. The scenes involving the Hawkins’
were more engaging than anything else in episode one.
I’ll
gladly eat those words if Humans 2
matches the quality of its predecessor. Maybe, in its eagerness to grab our
attention, it just got off to an awkward, malfunctioning start.
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