I’ve caught up with the
final episode of Hidden, which I’ve reviewed here before, and also seen another
recent BBC TV crime show, The Field of Blood. The contrast between the two was
striking.
Hidden first. It was
full of action and plot developments, but it all became pretty incoherent. A
sad waste of the talents of a cast that included David Suchet as well as the
charismatic Philip Glenister. Disappointing.
The Field of Blood,
unlike Hidden, was not originally written for TV. It was a two-parter adapted
from a novel by a talented author, Denise Mina, though I haven’t read it. Set
in 1982, the story concerns a young woman, Paddy Meehan, who is keen to make
her way in journalism. The abduction and
murder of a young boy gives her a chance. But her own youthful cousin becomes a
suspect.
The script was an odd
mixture. There were some good lines, but the first episode was painfully slow
at times, and there was a weird and monotonous insistence that Paddy was fat
and plain. Jayd Johnson, who played Paddy, is certainly neither. And I also
felt the repellent sexism of the newspapermen was rather unsubtly depicted.
But the pace picked up,
and the second episode was excellent. David Morrissey and Peter Capaldi, in
relatively small parts for such notable actors, were very good, but Jayd
Johnson was at the centre of everything that worked best. And the story had some interesting things
to say about families - also a theme of Hidden. The Field of Blood tried to do less than Hidden, but in
the end made much more of an impact.
