The Bay, episode 3, review: there’s barely enough appeal to keep you watching
For any crime drama to work you have to get viewers to buy into the fundamentals of setting, plot and character – preferably all three. And while the setting of The Bay (ITV) in Morecambe is credible enough, three episodes in I’m still not convinced by the story or the lead characters.
That a major inquiry into the disappearance of two vulnerable teenagers – let alone one that has since evolved into a “Category A” murder case – would be led by a local inspector with a tiny team and no supervision really doesn’t ring true. Nor does the complete absence of interest from local or national press, when such a story would surely have the media in thrall for weeks, exerting enormous pressure. As for the curious lack of investigative urgency, and a police team that asks the most basic questions only when a plot-point requires them to do so? They end up looking, unintentionally, incompetent.
My biggest bugbear is the lead character DS Lisa Armstrong who, despite having the brilliant Morven Christie playing her, doesn’t fully stack up as a character. Would any police officer (and mother of two children the same age as the missing/murdered pair) really suppress vital evidence (of her being with one of the prime suspects at a key moment) and withhold information that put another suspect’s safety at risk (her accidental leaking of his details to a potentially vengeful parent) with so little cost to her conscience? As for last night’s scene in which she suggested the parents apply for compensation payments, when they still had one child missing and unaccounted for – I mean, really?
In other words, there’s barely enough appeal in The Bay to keep me watching. The acting is of a generally high standard; which makes up for some of the script’s failings. And there remains the intriguing question of what happened to those young people. With three episodes still to go, the pace needs to quicken and the pieces need to start falling persuasively into place if there’s to be any hope of seeing this one through to the end.
