Review of Darkness – this crime drama is very scary and keeps the heat of the weather | Television

Gothic-lite is a contradiction in terms, I suppose, but that’s undoubtedly what you get from the new six-episode thriller Darkness. Based on Scottish crime writer GR Halliday’s From the Shadows, it opens with an invisible man punching holes in leather straps, then crossing mountains of naked unconscious or dead bodies on his shoulder. Hands tickle like metronomes recording the time that has already passed, we strongly suspect.

So it proves, as the next time we see the body pass through a drone shot that reveals that he was laid on the ground, arms pointing prayerfully above the head in empty prayers. DI Monica Kennedy (Laura Donnelly) is called in to investigate and a cold, dark conspiracy begins to form. When it’s not shivering with dreich – which, with the cold finger of fear that often runs up and down the viewer’s spine, makes it the perfect antidote to the heat.

Don’t just look if you have sons or grandsons that you love. The body is that of 17-year-old Jason Morgan, the younger brother of the boy who disappeared five years ago. DI Kennedy also investigated this. There were rumors that his stepfather Barclay (Emun Elliott) killed the boy, Nichol, telling his new friend Crawford (Mark Rowley); however, evidence showed that he escaped. She tells her parents about Jason’s death and it doesn’t happen so slowly that the horror screams louder. His mother, Bethany (Helen Baxendale), cuts a huge cake for Crawford as Barclay leaves to discover the body and accidentally throws it on the ground. It’s the number of domestic problems he has to deal with, but it’s all wrong.

As the investigation into Jason’s death kicks into gear (sometimes relying on leaps of knowledge from the jar jar and facts elsewhere), other players come into play. There’s Rob (Aaron McVeigh), the same age as Jason, who works as a waiter at a nearby hotel and finds a burning phone one morning taped to the handlebars of his beloved bike. His mother, who recently left him with his father for reasons that have yet to be revealed, sends him text messages, apologizing and wanting to meet. I’m surprised, you’re surprised, but Rob isn’t surprised – he just smiles with relief.

Soon DI Kennedy realizes that he is on the trail of another killer and he and the audience will look for clues (swallowed stones, intoxicating tea, slaughtered and watered animals) that seem to point to a connection between the murder and the murder of the suspects, red herrings and a growing list of suspects to get to the truth. For the latter, only the first two episodes gave the old Nichol (perhaps more sensitive, perhaps worse) Michael (Tunji Kasim), who is now a medicine bag, Rob’s father (Cal Macaninch), Barclay, yes (not removing the village gossip), Don the village rabbit, Phil McKee and the dead old man. they are missing. More will no doubt come in and out, leaving us hungry for answers until the delivery of what I suspect will be a tense but satisfying resolution in another four hours.

Along with the style and confidence already known from the ITV brand and Kennedy himself. I didn’t know how ready I was to have a female detective with her own childcare arrangements (a grandmother! Who doesn’t even have a mental breakdown in the first place! Played by Stella Gonet!) and a backstory that has more to it than dealing with the guilt of a single working-class woman and a useless husband. Interesting insights into Kennedy’s past are provided by the local people he meets and talks to, who seem to remember being pregnant a few years ago with strange interest, and by a woman who seems to want to return the child to her father. All that is gothic to keep is the thing, and once it thickens and does not interfere with the main plot.

There are weaknesses in the Darkness. The above-mentioned jumps, unexpected (there is no reason, for example, for Kennedy to take certain flowers to the hospital after being told, instead of explaining that they are not from him, except for the needs of the story) is a very strange part, written in vain for a pathologist, who has to say things like “deep darkness” and “darkness of the east” of Europe. again, maybe trying to find a play he should be in instead.

Other than that, it’s a lot of fun. Lean over and let it chill to the bone.