Killing on the dock of the bay

Lejink

A single-parent cop with difficult kids gets embroiled in investigating a small-town child-murder. Paired with a new partner of the opposite sex, it's not long before sub-plots involving their offspring and naturally the immediate family of the victim rear their heads over six episodes before all is resolved one way or another, but not before a pageant of suspects is presented before the one what done it is surprisingly revealed. Sound familiar? Possibly the broad church of clues provided above will help.

Certainly it started dramatically if unbelievably as lead cop, local girl, Morven Christie loses her head at a girlie night out and gets intimate down a back-alley with the guy who soon enough becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his own step-children that very night, which then sees one of the children turn up dead. After arresting her one-night stand for murder, she then erases the CCTV of their tryst while still trying to exercise impartiality in the investigation, but her troubles are only beginning as she not only is forced to take on a green, if willing young male as her new partner but under her nose her daughter is falling into the clutches of a local drug supplier and her son into an on-line dare craze which soon escalates out of control.

There was a lot of unbelievable coincidence and cliche to swallow and I'm not sure the drama depicted was quite good enough to make it all seem even slightly credible. At least I didn't guess the perpetrator but the reveal was hardly climactic, far less cataclysmic and not really worth the wait. Some of the casting choices I found unconvincing, like the young cop Med who Christie initially sidelines and who can't put a foot right before he unsurprisingly comes onto a blinder later in proceedings or the young black cop profiler who barely looks out of school, never mind police training college.

Some of the acting was okay, like Jonas Armstrong as the errant fisherman with a port in every storm and Daniel Ryan as Christie's boss but these were the only two to really stand out from the cast. It all ended on another, this time sentimental closing scene with two sets of families reconciled to themselves but this trip around Morecambe Bay in the end didn't really take me anywhere.

score 5/10

Lejink 29 April 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4816168/