‘Loch Ness’ gets dark and murky
There are several monsters in ITV’s mystery “Loch Ness,” making its U.S. premiere on Acorn TV on Monday, June 19, but they are all human.
The six-part miniseries, created and written by Stephen Brady (“Vera”), is set in the towns around the famous Scottish lake, where tourism is a major enterprise and “Nessie” is a constant, albeit unseen, presence.
One night, some high school students pull an elaborate prank on the beach, creating a fake monster body with animal parts. The kids are appropriately reprimanded, including Evie (Shona McHugh), daughter of local detective Annie Redford (Laura Fraser).
At the time, Annie is working with out-of-town cop Lauren Quigley (Siobhan Finneran), investigating the death of a local man whose body is found at the base of a mountain.
When a human heart is discovered among the animal parts on the beach, Evie’s involvement in the prank temporarily sidelines her mother from the increasingly complicated investigation.
If the eventual resolution of the cases — plural, because there are other deaths — is legitimately surprising, it’s in part because Brady has cast suspicion on so many people in the village that they may as well all be named McGuffin. Is it the widowed doctor who threw the gay music teacher out of his house? Is it the murderer who has turned his life around after having been released from prison years before? Could it be the ex-murderer’s onetime cohort? Why is the single mother keeping her bedridden son sedated all the time? Time after time, Brady nudges us to put two and two together before taking gleeful pleasure in dispelling our suspicions.
In truth, the mystery is somewhat overplotted and there are scattered moments when we wouldn’t fully believe certain character decisions, but we’re already too hooked on wanting to know who is responsible for the deaths of a music teacher, a socially awkward high school kid, and two of his classmates, not to mention a man anchored to the floor of the loch with a curling stone.
The eventual solution is monstrous.
David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV