The Red King, review: offbeat cop drama combines Midsomer Murders with The Wicker Man
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Imagine, if you will, Midsomer Murders mixed with The Wicker Man and you would quite likely get Alibi’s newest offering The Red King, a curiously offbeat crime thriller from the mind of Being Human writer Toby Whithouse (and available as a boxset).
Whithouse has form with combining comedy and horror and he’s clearly had a ball dreaming up the imaginary island of St Jory, a tight-knit community supposedly cut off from the Welsh mainland (it was actually filmed on the stunning Northumberland coast) where the locals are in thrall to The True Way, a cultish pagan belief system that cocks a veritable snook at modern society. This lot like to take the law into their own hands.
Into this maelstrom of masks and mumbo jumbo steps DS Grace Narayan, sent to St Jory as a “punishment posting” for refusing to play by police-game rules which dictate you never, no matter what, drop your fellow officers in it. Grace is fiercely by the book, a woman of principle in a world gone to hell in a handcart.
It’s a tough role to pull off but Anjli Mohindra hits just the right note, her principles colliding with pragmatism, as Grace gets to grips with St Jory’s dark secrets. What starts out as a missing-person cold case soon heats
up into a feverish mix of mystery and philosophical debate as the St Jory faithful set out to mete out their own brand of kangaroo-court justice, complete with fetishistic headgear.
In the drama’s strongest storyline, the idea that Grace may abandon her own beliefs and join the dark side
will have you questioning just where we are as a society when it comes to dealing with criminals. It’s here that Whithouse delivers his strongest writing, playing devil’s advocate by giving St Jory top gun Lady Nancarrow (Bridgerton’s Adjoa Andoh, eating up the scenery with relish) an unsettlingly persuasive speech advocating mob rule.
Elsewhere the tone is not quite so sure-footed, attempts at subversive humour rather undercut the kind of tension and jeopardy you might expect when it comes to unmasking the culprit in what is, at heart, a grim murder case. But in the savvy coupling of Grace with fresh-faced local copper Owen (James Bamford) we get a welcome addition to the ranks of mismatched crime crackers.
So much so that I’ll forgive the shameless pitch for a second series as the credits roll on the final episode. Grace and Owen – and St Jory – are well worth a return visit.
