Blonde bombshell

Anna Friel’s got a new look, a new identity and a deadly new mission for series three of the thrilling crime drama

MARCELLA

Tuesday, ITV, 9pm & 10.05pm

They say that blondes have more fun. But even sporting her bright new peroxide look, Marcella (Anna Friel, above) is still immersed in the grimly relentless battle against crime and evil. Gone are the brunette tresses and trademark green coat with a fur-trim hood that made the detective an unlikely fashion icon. As the hit show returns to ITV after three years away, Marcella – now thought to be dead by her colleagues back in London – has moved to Northern Ireland, where she’s gone deep under cover.

Going by the name Keira, she has even taken to wearing high heels in the kind of stereotypically feminine ensemble that this defiantly assertive heroine would surely never have been seen in before.

Hardly recognisable as her old self, Marcella has also taken an unlikely new lover, Lawrence, a mild-mannered accountant who seems to offer at least a hope of happiness as he hands her a glass of champagne in the opening moments and tells her: ‘Ten months ago today you walked into my office and I met you for the first time. They’ve been the best and probably the happiest ten months of my life. I love you.’ But as we’ve learnt after two gruelling series of the consistently compelling but dark, Nordic noir-style drama thriller (written by Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of The Bridge), being happy is always at best a distant and fleeting prospect in Marcella’s world. Her newly created persona and her relationship with Lawrence have been conceived simply as her way into the notorious crime family he works for – the murderous Maguires.

Amanda Burton joins the cast as the crime syndicate’s merciless matriarch, Katherine, while Hugo Speer (top left) returns as Marcella’s handler, Frank.

Pitching Marcella against a small army of killers on both sides of the Irish Sea, this is an investigation that will put the detective’s life at risk at almost every moment, and would leave any ordinary civilian’s nerves in shreds.

After the experiences she’s endured in previous storylines, we know that there’s almost nothing Marcella can’t get through – though she is still haunted by the terrible mental demons that led her to kill her own child, as we discovered in the shocking revelations at the end of the second series.

We’re going to have to wait until the end of the eight-part run (already screened on Netflix) to find out whether Marcella can survive and grab some semblance of peace after all this time. But here’s another chance for Friel to exhibit the brilliance that has already earned her an Emmy in the role.