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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Laying the dead to rest

1:01 PM / Television / 1 Comment

This past weekend, the BBC's Emmy-winning crime series WAKING THE DEAD began its ninth and sadly final season with a two-parter, "Harbinger", penned by Ed Whitmore. Whitmore is someone whose writing I have a lot of time for, particularly with regard to his contributions to WAKING THE DEAD. He wrote my favourite ever episode, Series 2's "Thin Air", as well as Series 3's "Multistorey", the episode that bagged the show its Emmy, and in my opinion the quality of the show suffered noticeably during his two-year absence from it (Series 6 and 7). When he returned during Series 8, he gave us the best episode of WAKING THE DEAD in years, "End of the Night", and as such I was elated by the news that he would be serving as lead writer for Series 9, responsible for three of the five two-parters. (Obviously, it would have been perfect if creator Barbara Machin came back to do the finale, but it doesn't look like this will be happening.)

Having watched WAKING THE DEAD from its 2000 pilot and never missed a single episode, I've come to recognise the recurring traits that would tend to pop up in episodes penned by the same writers. Stephen Davis' scripts, for example, were often laugh-out-loud hilarious, while Declan Croghan (the head writer for Series 6 and 7, and the creator of the upcoming THE BODY FARM spin-off) made heavy use of religious imagery and creepy cults. Whitmore's modus operandi has tended to be revealing the hidden depravities committed by supposedly respectable upper middle class families, and "Harbinger" is no exception. What initially seemed to be a fairly conventional "missing person" story (albeit one with the odd unique touch, such as a creepy old couple clearly inspired by Grant Wood's American Gothic) went off in a completely different direction in the second hour when the team uncovered a particularly disturbing case of Münchausen syndrome by proxy.

This is what I love about Whitmore's episodes. So often, he gives you what you think is one thing, then proceeds to twist it in a completely different direction, while at the same time layering in enough clues that the final reveal makes complete sense. (I'm thinking in particular of "Thin Air" and the revelation that Roger Allam's character had been in love with his own daughter.) I've noticed that whereas some writers tend to pack as much excitement into Part 1 as possible, meaning that Part 2 is sometimes a bit of a letdown, Whitmore takes the time to build things up in the first half, so he can then pay them off satisfyingly in the second. Taken in isolation, Part 1 of "Harbinger" feels a little bland and unremarkable, but view it in the context of Part 2 and it becomes clear just how well constructed the story is as a whole.

I do miss the old team, though, and the insertion of a new character, played by Eva Birthistle, just makes me yearn for the interplay that built up between the original five leads over the course of the four series they spent together. Boyd, Grace and Spence are still present and correct, and the Boyd/Grace scenes invariably tend to result in the best moments in any episode, but Birthistle's character, Sarah, hasn't really gelled with the team yet, and I'm afraid I've never taken to the current pathologist, Eve (who'll be the main character in THE BODY FARM). (And what happened to Kat, the new girl from the previous series? 80s hair aside, I liked her.) Before the start of Series 9, I did a flying recap of the show, watching one episode from each season, and I was struck by the evolving chemistry between the original leads, culminating in the pitch-perfect Series 4. This exchange between Boyd and Frankie, from "Anger Management", just kills me:

(Boyd has started seeing a therapist and is learning to control his anger. The team are used to him blowing up at the slightest provocation, which is why Frankie is so disturbed by his even-temperedness here.)

Sorry to inadvertently turn this into a bit of a grousing session, but this (heavily improv'd, by the looks of it) exchange between two talented actors who clearly know their characters intimately is the sort of thing that made WAKING THE DEAD so unmissable for its first four to five years and is the element I found most sorely lacking in the Series 6-7 period. We got little hints of it in Series 8 (Boyd and Grace's discussion about which of them has the weirder job in "End of the Night" being a particular highlight), and I'm hoping there's more to come before things come to a close in four weeks' time. I'm genuinely sorry WAKING THE DEAD is ending - it is, for my money, by far the best long-running detective series I've watched in recent years, and trounces the flashier, sillier US equivalent, CSI - but on the plus side it stands a reasonable chance of ending on some sort of a high. And if at some point in the future, Boyd and the team decide to don their lab coats once again to once again pick over the bones of a few more rotting corpses, I'll be there.

Incidentally, my picks for the best episode of each series are (bearing in mind that it's hard to pick a "favourite" for the lacklustre Series 6 and 7):

• Series 1: "Every Breath You Take" by Barbara Machin
• Series 2: "Thin Air" by Ed Whitmore
• Series 3: "Breaking Glass" by Stephen Davis
• Series 4: "Anger Management" by John Milne & Andy Hay
• Series 5: "Straw Dog" by Declan Croghan
• Series 6: "Yahrzeit" by Declan Croghan
• Series 7: "Skin" by Clive Bradley & Declan Croghan
• Series 8: "End of the Night" by Ed Whitmore

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