comes a new UK set detective drama called Marcella. And as it's a while since I had a good rant about a TV program, its arrival is timely.
That's Anna Friel there in the title role. I am generally a fan of Anna Friel, who is an excellent actress and can normally be relied upon to choose good stuff to appear in. I'm not sure Marcella is destined to be her finest hour.
There are many many things which I find irritating about Marcella and the first one even predates the transmission of Part 1 last evening. In the article giving it a bit of a puff before it started the Radio Times (self-defined as The UK's premier TV listings magazine) was at pains to point out that you pronounce the name Mar-chella with a ch. I know this. I am not aware that there is a common alternate pronunciation. Maybe there is, - Marsella? Markella? But guys - if I am not going to watch the program it doesn't matter, If I am going to watch the program I am going to hear people say it. Also, in a drama series about detectives chasing floundering about after a serial killer, there are other items to address. Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel I need patronising pronunciation advice from a magazine one of whose writers once enthused over someone's 'fictional novels'.
Leaving that aside, I had several other problems with Marcella. One was the casting. Apart from the excellent Ms Friel there were far too many indistinguishable middle aged men who were slightly overweight with pasty skin and occasionally a bit of stubble. Some of them were police officers. Some of them were suspects from years ago. Some were suspects now. Some of them just hung around in a menacing manner and one of them was currently held at her majesty's pleasure in an open prison, and working towards his anticipated release in a bakery. I could not for the life of me tell most of them apart. Another annoyance was the appearance of Nina Sosanya. I've got nothing against her, leaving aside that her permanent expression seems to be one of sulky chip on the shoulder-ness, but I'm just sick of seeing her. Ditto Suranne Jones (who isn't in this) who again is probably a good actress but who at times seems to monopolise my TV set. If 90% of actors are out of work at any given time is it beyond the wit of casting directors to spread the net just a bit wider?
Another gripe was the stereotypical characterisation. Sinead Cusack as a successful, and therefore, necessarily nasty and unfeeling, indeed almost pathological, businesswoman (because nice, sensible, rounded women can't be successful obviously ) with an emasculated husband, a high flying coke snorting daughter and a useless step-son. Three guesses as to what her business might be.If your first guess is banker, then nice try but no coconut. If she's not a banker though then she has to be a property developer* , right? Right, Third guess not needed.
* Sarah Beeny is a property developer, and successful, and a woman, but somehow I don't see her arranging an early morning meeting with a subcontractor on the roof of a high rise building and then implying she will get her accompanying 'muscle' to throw him off if he doesn't sign a contract reducing his prices by a third.
Stereotypical characters for a (thus far) stereotypical plot. A serial killer is on the loose, or possibly the rampage, in London. His method of killing is the same as that employed seven years before by a murderer who the Met never caught.
And this is where Marcella, not to mention my major gripe, comes in. Marcella worked the case before. Marcella left the force to bring up her children, something which she seems to have been doing by packing them off to boarding school and mooching round the house. Given the amount of spare time she must have had, you would have thought that she could have nipped 'up west' and bought herself a new coat. That thing she is wearing on the photo above seems to be the only coat she has and is never off her back. I had one something like it, right down to the fake fur trim, when I was in my teens. I was not aware that they were still sold. Anyway, a detective comes round to ask her about the old case. After ten minutes she tells him she wants to come back to work and hey presto! there she is in the CID room, on the payroll, everyone calling her sergeant, a fully fledged officer of the Met once again after a seven year absence, no questions asked. That would be bad enough. I mean, in a competition to find the least credible detective series scenario, is this not the one that would take both the top spot and the biscuits? Well, apparently not, because there is more, much more, to this. Marcella has a problem, and it's not just the nasty violent temper that, as displayed in the program would in itself make her a less than ideal candidate for police service. No, more than that, Marcella loses chunks of time. She blacks out, comes to and has no recollection of what she has done, where she has been or indeed how long it is since her last consciously remembered thoughts and actions. I'm sorry, but no police force in Europe would have someone like this on their books. It is totally, utterly, bonkers.
Now I know about dramatic licence and how real police work is often very boring and how you have to shake things up to make them interesting to a viewing audience. And generally I can go along with that, otherwise I wouldn't have spent hours of my life knitting to Lewis and wondering how anyone could have such thin legs as Laurence Fox. But there's a difference between wanting me to suspend my disbelief and expecting me to hang it by the neck until it is dead. Which is what Marcella seems to think its audience will willingly do.
Well said! Utter drivel..... H xx
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