TV Review: RIVER and THE RETURNED

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 17 October 2015.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

River: Tuesday, BBC One

The Returned: Friday, More4

Paul Whitelaw

Just when you thought the hoary old cliché of the troubled detective with an extensive vinyl collection had been pummelled beyond repair, along comes River to show that there's life in the old dog yet.

The effectiveness of this new cop drama from Abi Morgan (The Hour) is enormously surprising, as from the moment I first heard about it I assumed the worst. After all, the very concept of a maverick cop named John River sounds ridiculous. 

It reminded me instinctively of Simon Day as John Actor in The Fast Show's Monkfish sketches (“John Actor is a tough, uncompromising inspector/doctor/vet...”).

However, putting aside the vast unlikelihood of the great Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard playing a character named John River, this is undoubtedly the most confident attempt yet at transplanting the existential angst of Nordic noir to British climes. Face facts, From Darkness.

The opening ten minutes alone offered some of the most arresting drama I've seen on TV all year. Scored to Tina Charles' disco classic I Love To Love, the sequence immediately established a warm, understated chemistry between the endearingly discomfited River and his more exuberant partner DS Stevenson (the always believable Nicola Walker, who also shines at the moment in ITV's above-par crime drama Unforgotten).

Their affectionate banter was punctured suddenly when River spotted a petty drug dealer. Chasing him on foot, our wheezy, ageing hero unwittingly drove the suspect to his death. The scene that followed seemed standard at first: River's weary chief (the wonderful Lesley Manville of Mike Leigh renown) arrived to chastise him for causing the young man's demise.

As Stevenson offered him support, the camera span around slowly to reveal a gaping wound on the back of her head. She'd been killed in action, and now exists only in grieving River's mind. It's a measure of how well this twist was handled that its invocation of another great comedy sketch – Chuffy, the imaginary sidekick from Armstrong & Miller – didn't make me laugh. It was so unforeseen, I admired its audacity.

It transpired that River is haunted by other ghosts, namely a murdered teenage girl whom he'd failed to rescue, and – there's no way of describing this without it sounding ridiculous – a 19^th century serial killer (Eddie Marsan, another gifted Leigh veteran). They're voices in his head, a manifestation of his troubled psyche. Ghosts who assist him in solving problems. 

If his noggin wasn't already crowded enough, the episode ended with a bedtime visit from the innocent man he "murdered" at the top of the episode. It's quite a party in there.

Judged incorrectly, this swirling cavalcade of psychological eccentricity could easily descend into farce. But so far at least, River gets the tone just right. It's rather subversive and unusual in an intelligent, dry-witted way. Skarsgard inhabits the role of River with sad-eyed charm and intensity. For once, the old cop-with-a-difference cliché seems justified.

Bathed in shades of medicinal green and nocturnal red, it's also directed with a sharp eye for striking composition. Delightfully, this highly promising show confounded all my expectations.

One of my favourite dramas of recent years, The Returned made good on its title last week for a second series of French supernatural mystery. Despite its ambiguous finale, I actually felt quite satisfied with series one as a self-contained piece. Is another series necessary?

Steeped in glacial intrigue, the opening episode suggested that there's more to be gleaned from this everyday saga of a remote French town populated by photogenic zombies.

Granted, thanks to a two year transmission gap between series, it took me about half an hour to fully remember who the hell everyone was. But once the fog had cleared, I was cautiously hooked all over again.

God only knows if it'll ever make complete sense, but that's not really the point. It's a disquietingly atmospheric mood piece, an exercise in odd, beautiful Twin Peaks-esque style. I'm glad it's back, to linger in the memory like one of River's manifests.  

TV preview: THE RETURNED; DATES; AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT

This article was originally published in The Scotsman on 8th June 2013.

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/tv-and-radio/tv-preview-the-returned-dates-agatha-christie-s-poirot-1-2960252

THE RETURNED

Sunday, Channel 4, 9pm

DATES

Monday to Wednesday, Channel 4, 10pm

AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT: ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER

Sunday, STV, 8pm

Their first foreign-language acquisition in over 20 years, THE RETURNED is clearly Channel 4's attempt to hijack the runaway success of BBC4's European drama bandwagon.

The subtitled likes of Spiral, Wallander, Arne Dahl, The Bridge, and, most notably, The Killing have all attracted dedicated cults in the last few years, and I suspect this French supernatural drama – a critically-acclaimed smash at home under its original title, Les Revenants – will reap similar awards. Having dipped a cautious toe in the pool with the inferior US remake of The Killing, this is Channel 4 fully and belatedly embracing one of the biggest TV trends of our time. And it looks like they've chosen wisely.

Loosely based on a 2004 film of the same name, it focuses on the residents of a picturesque Alpine town as they come to terms with the mystifying return of locals who died years ago (one suspects Dominic Mitchell, author of BBC3's recent zombie drama In the Flesh, is a fan). Outwardly normal in appearance – no rotting flesh or cannibalistic urges here – they haven't aged a day since they died, and have no memory of time passing.

Each episode nominally focuses on one particular character, with the first revolving around Camille, a young girl whose school bus crashes into a mountain dam. The opening scenes, in which she clambers from the ravine and wanders home through the twilight, recall the striking introduction to Twin Peaks: indeed, there's a vaguely Lynchian feel to this painterly study of a remote community torn apart by grief and mystery.

Despite the fantastical premise, the action unfolds at a leisurely, underplayed pace. Its quietude merely adds to the pervading atmosphere of disquieting intensity. With a sonorous score by Glasgow post-rock band Mogwai, it's a captivating moan of arthouse horror. That's right, on Channel 4, the home of Embarrassing Bodies and Big Fat Strictly Dole-Scum Hoarders. Well I never.

Mostly set at night, it takes place against an unnervingly sparse world of lamplight, underpasses and stark apartment blocks, redolent in mood of Let The Right One In. Aside from Camille – whose divorced parents greet her return with a believable embrace of stunned rapture – we're also introduced to a dazed returnee in search of his fiancee, and a creepy little boy whose mute demeanor and inscrutable smile are more frightening than most 18-rated horror films. He's like a “cursed” painting come to life.

If we're to trust the garlands it received upon its initial transmission in France, then The Returned may be one of the most striking TV dramas of the year. Channel 4 doubtless regard it as a gamble – their decision to broadcast the ad-breaks in French smacks of nervous gimmickry – but I don't doubt its addictive cult appeal. Baffling in the best possible sense, its haunting mystique is inescapable.

Given my pathological aversion to cocksure young people and their hats, I could never abide E4 youth drama Skins. But its creator, Bryan Elsley, has pleasantly surprised me with his latest venture, DATES. A series of half-hour dramas focusing on characters struggling through first dates, it's an almost unremittingly bleak treatise on various human foibles. But don't let that put you off: bleak is good.

Essentially a series of standalone two-hander plays – although at least one character crops up in a later episode – it's the sort of “experimental” piece one used to associate with Channel 4 in its halcyon days. Although episode one shows that Elsley hasn't lost his knack for creating profoundly irritating characters, there's something cruelly captivating about chippy everyman Will Mellor's awkward encounter with Oona Chaplin's aggressively unlikeable bully. Although one wonders why, wounded pride aside, Mellor's character would put up with her exhausting unpleasantness, I do admire Elsley's refusal to soften the blows.

Having watched the first three episodes – mousy Sheridan Smith's queasy date with Neil Maskell's gruff city trader is similarly unyielding – it seems that Elsley is attempting to say something meaningful about the guises we adopt at our most vulnerable and desperate. It's an unedifying portrait of human nature at somewhere near its worst: a cynical blast of rotten candour. Whether Elsley and his fellow writers actually like their characters is a moot point, but I can't deny the claustrophobic, voyeuristic impact of these superbly performed chamber pieces.

David Suchet's ambitious goal of starring in an adaptation of every single Hercule Poirot novel and short story nears fruition with AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT: ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER, which begins ITV's final leg of the long-running franchise. Widely regarded as the weakest Poirot novel – published in 1972, it was Christie's final dalliance with the character – it inevitably fails to pass muster in TV form.

Zoe Wannamaker returns as feted crime author – and Christie simulacrum – Ariadne Oliver, as she seeks the Belgian detective's assistance in solving the apparent double suicide of a happily married couple. Suchet, as always, is impeccable, but one can't shake the feeling that this underwhelming entry is merely a box-ticking exercise in fulfilling a legacy.