Marcella returns with a whole new look in ITV’S batshit thriller.
Creator Hans Rosenfeldt on the return of the intense thriller
WHEN WE last saw police officer Marcella Backland (Anna Friel), she was living under a railway bridge, having been declared officially dead. Now, at the start of the third series of the wonderfully bonkers drama, she’s got a blonde bob, a new husband and is living with a family of gangsters. Oh, and she’s called Keira. Which is pretty out there, even by Marcella’s standards. So what was the thinking behind Marcella Mark Two?
“Well, we couldn’t really bring her further down, she was very much at the bottom at the end of the last series,” says creator and writer Hans Rosenfeldt. “She’d found out she’d killed her own daughter, and tried to erase her identity because she didn’t want to be Marcella any more.”
Handily, she didn’t have to be, because in the first series Marcella swapped her DNA with a homeless woman who died at the end of series two, opening up all kinds of intriguing plot opportunities for Rosenfeldt.
“That was pure luck,” he laughs. “It wasn’t planned, I never plan ahead. We didn’t know there would even be a series two at that point. So that was a good day at the office.”
So, after the closing scenes of series two saw a man saying to Marcella, “The department I work for could use a dead police officer to go undercover,” she has ended up in Northern Ireland. As Keira, she’s married to one of the Maguires, a mob family presided over by a formidable matriarch (beautifully played by Amanda Burton).
“When we first meet Marcella, she’s enjoying being Keira, and creating a completely new character has been really good for her. The question is, is she becoming this new person?”
Given Marcella’s track record of random acts of violence, falsifying evidence, and being extemely volatile, there is another question — is she really the right choice to go undercover?
“There is one episode later in the series that shows how the police picked her up and trained her,” says the writer. “Because I do think we have to explain why the police force would put a rather unstable woman in such a dangerous position.”
That said, Marcella’s not averse to the odd bit of danger herself, as well as being rather good at using household goods as weapons. Just ask her ex-colleague Rav (Ray Panthaki), who she attacked with a toilet cistern in last season’s finale.
“What we’re playing with is whether or not she can really keep the old Marcella away,” explains Rosenfeldt. “She hasn’t buried her completely — there’s a hint of the old Marcella coming back in the opening episode.”
As for the likelihood of a fourth season, Rosenfeldt says, “Who knows? We ended series three without thinking of another series. Let’s just say it’ll be quite a stretch to see how we can bring it back.”
Well, Marcella is already officially dead, after all, so…