Deadwater Fell
Channel 4/All4
Deadwater Fell, which reached its stunning finale last Friday, has been the big TV drama surprise of the year so far. When it was first announced, it sounded to me like a fairly standard whodunnit, albeit with a great cast – David Tennant, The Good Wife’s Cush Jumbo and Matthew Mcnulty off The Bay. But the show’s creators have done a superb job of making this mystery resonate powerfully in all kinds of ways I wasn’t expecting. The deeply grim premise revolves round the deaths of three kids and their mother Kate (Anna Madeley) in a fire, which was initially assumed to have been deliberately started by the depressive Kate. But, as the story unfolds, suspicion falls on Kate’s doctor husband Tom (Tennant), who turns out to be much creepier than his charming bedside manner would suggest. The ingenious plotting then shifts and twists across the four episodes, while an atmosphere of queasy amorality enfolds most of the main players, as it becomes clear that pretty much everyone – from Tom and Kate, to their best friends, policeman Steve (Mcnulty) and Jess (Jumbo) – have dark secrets. With its rural setting (in a beautiful Scottish village), traditional whodunnit structure and presence of the great Mr Tennant, the series has echoes of Broadchurch, but it feels totally new, touching on important issues, such as grief, bullying, depression and coercive control, in a convincingly natural way. None of the characters are simplistic stereotypes and yet the central mystery works right up to the intense climax. It might not yet have become a Broadchurch-style cultural phenomenon, but it deserves to be one.