A refreshing return for this bracing seaside cop show
ITV’S crime dramas can be a mixed bag – let us never speak of modern-day Van Der Valk again – and the first series of Morecambe-set The Bay was so-so. It suffered from some silly plotting and inevitable comparisons to Broadchurch, but had the benefit of the talented Morven Christie as family liaison officer Lisa Armstrong. Writer Daragh Carville appears to have taken the criticism on board, because the set-up in this first episode of series two was sharply done and Lisa didn’t do anything career-threateningly stupid.
She was on her best behaviour, though. Demoted from DS to DC, she’s on probation and forced to play second fiddle to colleague Med (Taheen Modak), who has the emotional intelligence of a stick of rock.
The crime unfolded swiftly at the start of the episode. A family solicitor, Stephen Marshbrook, was gunned down in his hallway by a hitman posing as a delivery driver. His 10-year-old son witnessed the crime from such close quarters that he was left with blood splattered down his face – we’re not in cosy Midsomer Murders territory here.
The murder took place at a barbecue to mark the retirement of Stephen’s father-in-law. There is an odd family dynamic at play here (not that Med noticed) and an estranged daughter who works in a scrap yard. The backpacking son appeared blameless, so he’s probably one to keep an eye on.
Lisa has problems of her own – forced to sell her house after taking a cut in pay, she’s a single mum cooped up in a flat with two teenage children, trying to swallow her humiliation at work and earn back her stripes. Her character, thankfully, isn’t the gum-chewing, hard-as-nails female detective who pops up in police dramas these days, but an empathetic human being. And I’m willing to be corrected by Lancastrians, but the Scottish actress seemed to be making a good fist of the accent too.
The Bay is also stuffed with good character actors, from Sharon Small as Stephen’s widow, James Cosmo as his father-in-law and Daniel Ryan as Lisa’s boss. Joe Absolom turned up at the end as an ex who reeked of trouble.
It wasn’t terribly original – a child drawing a clue to the killer’s identity felt familiar – and the occasional plot point didn’t make sense: why the need to cut the Wi-fi cable and disable the alarm system if the murder was a doorstep hit on a suburban street? Whether the storyline can be sustained over six episodes remains to be seen. But there was enough in this opener to hold the attention.
Targeted: The Truth About Disability Hate Crime (BBC Two) was one of those documentaries that made you thoroughly depressed at human behaviour. The truth is that there are people who get their kicks by harassing, bullying and attacking the most vulnerable members of society.
Angela, who has dwarfism, was walking her dog when she heard someone say: “I dare you to go and kick that midget in the head.” She was set upon, and left with a perforated eardrum and fractured skull. Elaine, who is blind, was mugged twice; then a woman she had never met blocked her path one day and kicked her guide dog so hard that he was unable to work for weeks. Dan, who has autism and talks to himself as a calming mechanism, has also been attacked in the street and in his despair has had suicidal thoughts.
Ailsa’s story was most shocking of all, partly because some of the abuse aimed at her was captured on video, but also because it involved a community. A former nurse who was left in a wheelchair following a road traffic accident, she was targeted by neighbours on her housing estate with a campaign of intimidation so hostile that she was taken from her home under police escort. Her abusers’ behaviour was incomprehensible, accusing her of lying about her condition. It was soul-destroying for Ailsa, who is now living in temporary accommodation.
The maker of this documentary, Richard Butchins, is disabled. At first, I thought his film needed more. I wanted the perpetrators to be hauled in front of the cameras, made to explain themselves. What possessed the residents of Ailsa’s estate to behave in that way?
Legally that would have been tricky – we were informed at the end that nobody had been prosecuted for any of these attacks. But Butchins made the right decision regardless of that. Allowing the contributors simply to tell their stories was what gave the film its power, focusing our gaze on a form of hate crime that gets little attention.
The Bay ★★★
Targeted: The Truth About Disability Hate Crime ★★★★