The wit and wicked tongue is foremost in Weeks’ attractiveness as a character. Think of her as a colleague of Happy Valley’s Catherine Cawood and Broadchurch’s Ellie Miller, smart and sarky coppers all. Whether all that coalesces into something with its own identity is down to Weeks, the latest capable, down-to-earth female detective with a mordant wit to duck under the TV police line tape.
This four-part series is a jigsaw constructed from familiar pieces – murdered schoolgirl, big city vs small town copper friction, coming home drama, relationship strife. (Those who recognise him from his stand-up or CBBC role as hapless guard Gary in Maid Marian And Her Merry Men may have spotted Billingham as the court bailiff at Bates’ hearing.) In The Dark is adapted by Danny Brocklehurst ( Ordinary Lies, The Five, Shameless) from a standalone novel by celebrated crime writer Mark Billingham. We think about it quite a bit too, courtesy of multiple enigmatic flashbacks to the scene. “Do you ever think about what happened all them years ago?” she asks Linda. There’s also the question of what happened to her and ex-best friend Linda at the age of thirteen that left them traumatised for life. The paternity of Weeks’ baby isn’t the only mystery in her life. Is her baby’s dad kind, caring, fellow police officer Paul, who’s also in on the investigation, or the mysterious Adam? Weeks is doubly apprehensive about the pregnancy, we learn in episode one’s final scenes, because she’s been having an affair. Well, she actually says ‘arses’ and ‘tits’, but you get the idea. After building a career on the force, she can’t picture herself wiping bums and breast-feeding in cafes, she says. She also knows she’s pregnant, a development about which she’s understandably apprehensive.
0 kommentar(er)
