Bleak midwinter dramas so grim I nearly tuned in to Gregg Wallace

GREAT Scott, but 2022 has got off to a bleak start. Thank goodness there’s a government crisis to offer light relief, because the telly has been soul-sapping.

We’ve seen dramatisations of murders by the so-called ‘Grindr killer’ Stephen Port and the desperately sad aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.

Add to that documentaries on the hunt for mass murderer ‘Bible John’, and the case of nanny Louise Woodward, accused of shaking a baby to death.

The Bay (ITV) offers no let-up. On her first day in the job, police family liaison officer DS Jenn Townsend (Marsha Thomason) crashed her car and comforted a woman who saw her son’s body pulled from the sea.

Then she walked out of a counselling session for trauma and hung around at a wake where the grieving mother drank herself unconscious.

In between all that, she interviewed the dead man’s heartbroken girlfriend, who was still in shock from a racist attack on the street.

To make sure we didn’t misread the mood, there were lots of images of inconsolable relatives sobbing.

Any time the cameraman nipped outside, it was to capture slow shots of grey skies lowering over the Morecambe mud flats.

Honestly, compared to an hour of that, even the most depressing Ingmar Bergman movie is like a Keystone Kops comedy.

This drama wasn’t always so miserable. When it starred Morven Christie, there were moments of humour, even larkiness. Without that, the mood was so relentlessly low that I nearly switched over to watch Gregg Wallace on Inside The Factory. Yes, it was that grim.

The frustration is that there’s a strong cast here.

Hollywood star Vincent Regan plays the grief-stricken woman’s partner, and we glimpsed Mark Stanley at a boxing club — another big name, and one who will surely come to the fore in later episodes.

That’s a reason to stick with it. So is the tension between Jenn and her sidekick, DS Karen Hobson (Erin Shanagher). They got off on the wrong foot and are constantly at cross-purposes, wanting to be friends but never gelling.

If The Bay can play up those strengths, the departure of Christie won’t matter. But I can’t stand many more weeping aunties.

There was little quarter from Rules Of The Game (BBC1) either. This bitter workplace drama about sexual abuse does have moments of humour, but they are as hollow as the characters’ hearts.

Maxine Peake as office manager Sam took one look at her rival Maya’s bald cat, Audrey the hairless sphinx, and sniped: ‘It looks like an animated skin graft.’

In case that wasn’t tasteless enough, five minutes later poor Audrey was run over — because Rules Of The Game is the sort of drama where pets exist only to provoke mawkish sympathy when they are killed off.

Sam had the cat cremated and then, in a scene of exceptional crassness, threw the ashes over Maya (Rakhee Thakrar) in the office car park. Meanwhile, all the men are weasels with uncontrollable sexual urges, either groping anyone in a skirt or downloading violent porn.

All the women are snide, deceitful, self-obsessed bullies, getting together once a week to drink Asti Spumante by the crate at ‘cheese night’.

I’m at a loss. Which of them, if any, are we supposed to like? Who do we want to see win?

The story is mostly seen through Sam’s eyes, as she relates it in a state of shock to a police officer who is practically holding her hostage. But if Sam was ever a victim, she’s too cruel and hard to be the heroine now.

It’s all just horrible.