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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Waking the Dead: Series 8, Episodes 5 and 6: Substitute

1:35 PM / Television / 3 Comments

Written by Edward Bennett and Ed Whitmore; Directed by Edward Bennett

This has got to rank as hands down the silliest episode of Waking the Dead ever screened - a crushing disappointment when you consider how good last week's instalment was.

The story: interminably dull pathologist Eve starts a relationship with an eastern European aid worker, Stefan Koscinski (Joseph Mawle), but becomes suspicious of him when she discovers him to be in the possession of multiple passports, each under a different name. She illicitly obtains a sample of his DNA (as you do) and runs it through the usual procedures in her lab, resulting in it being matched to DNA found at the scene of the murder of a fellow aid worker, Briony Havers. Boyd, when he discovers this, immediately calls in another team to take over due to the conflict of interest... Haha, who am I kidding? He decides he and his team will investigate the matter themselves, with Eve continuing her relationship with Stefan so she can spy on him and report back.

What emerges is a gruesome tale of people trafficking and organ harvesting in which Stefan may or may not be implicated, and for the first of the two instalments, it just about works, though it's not really Waking the Dead. Generally speaking, I tend to find that precinct dramas end up on very shaky ground when they involve their regular characters in their own incidents; I tend to prefer it when their level of personal involvement is restricted to their personal feelings influencing the way they approach a case. Go too far in the other direction and you find yourself in "Goodness gracious, who would have thought that I, a criminal investigator, would end up at the centre of my very own criminal investigation!" territory, which quickly becomes silly if done too often. Waking the Dead, to its credit, has largely steered clear of these trappings, and when it has done personal storylines for its regulars has tended to tie them to past cases - for instance Grace in Straw Dog and Spence in Cold Fusion. Substitute breaks what I consider to be the unwritten rule of Waking the Dead: don't mix business with pleasure. Rather than a past case coming back to haunt her, Eve starts a relationship with a man only for him to coincidentally turn out to be linked to both a previous murder and ongoing criminal activity. Suddenly, it's not the Waking the Dead I know and love but rather a conventional detective drama in the vein of latter-day Trial & Retribution.

When I read the spoilers for this two-parter, my first thought was "Wow, this sounds a bit daft." As it turns out, I was right to be anxious: things do indeed get very silly indeed, especially in the second part, as plot development after idiotic plot development unfolds, stretching credibility to breaking point and ultimately causing characters to react in completely moronic ways in order to get from Point A to Point B. All this concludes with Boyd willingly leaving a man to be killed and allowing the perpetrators to walk free, despite knowing the depths of the depravity in which they are involved. Oddly enough, that's far from the most idiotic decision the character makes in this episode, but to go into any further detail would be to give too much away.

Suffice it to say, the last couple of series of Waking the Dead each had their own "clunker" episode: Series 6 had Deus Ex Machina and Series 7 had Wounds. I sincerely hope that Substitute was Series 8's low point and that tomorrow's season finale will be of a higher standard. Then again, having read the synopsis printed in the Radio Times, I have a feeling I shall have to grit my teeth as the writers trot out one of my most detested of all clichés...

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