Marcella, episode 8 review – this crime drama truly stretched plausibility to its limit
The great British scriptwriter Jimmy McGovern once put it to me that we would all have been much less hooked on The Killing if it weren’t subtitled. I thought that harsh, but for two series Marcella (ITV) has robustly tested McGovern’s theory. The creation of Hans Rosenfeldt, who brought us The Bridge, it has imported the Nordic noir template into English: vastly afflicted female detective wrestles with her demons while hunting down a serial killer fired by a higher purpose.
In the penultimate episode it was revealed that the serial killer was none other than the new artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. Nobody saw Jane Colletti (Michelle Terry) as the guilty party coming, and yet there’s a reliable rule for culprit-spotting in crime drama: if a high-status cast member hasn’t had much to do, they done it.
By that score, Terry was staring us all in the face. After the vicious catfight with Marcella (Anna Friel), she had her big moment in the interview room when Colletti subtly transmuted from a caring mother into a crazy pre-emptive vigilante purging society of future paedophiles. Asked about the location of one of her victims, she said, “The Thames” and even sniggered.
Having just rescued her own son from Colletti’s clutches, Marcella shouldn’t really have been conducting this interview. But in Nordic noir they eat conflicts of interest for breakfast. It’s bonkers, but let’s face it, Marcella has rejoiced in its own full-pelt absurdity. And Friel has the big eyes to do bonkers. In this final episode her peepers were set in full saucer mode when, after disinterring her past under hypnosis, she went about making Sara Lund and Saga Norén look like a pair of vicars’ wives.
Assaulting and handcuffing a colleague who had just saved her from suicide, maiming her face, abandoning her children – you name it, Marcella was at it. You might think she’d done enough to earn some forced gardening leave, if not prison, but the final minutes seemed to promise an undercover identity and a new police role in a third series. Perhaps it would be more plausible with subtitles.
