The Bay, review: five series in, and the Morecambe-set crime drama still hasn't found a memorable lead
TV detectives usually have miserable personal lives, for some reason. Just look at the ones on screen right now. DCI Jessie James in Unforgotten has a cheating husband. The new Jim Bergerac is grieving for his recently deceased wife. DS Jenn Townsend (Marsha Thomason) in The Bay (ITV1), back for a fifth series, is no different.
Her problems are mundane. Her widowed mum has come to stay and is a bit annoying. Her husband is stressed because he's a deputy head and the Ofsted inspectors are coming (the headteacher greeted this news by announcing that she was going off sick with stress, leaving her deputy to face the music). She probably relishes a knotty murder case, just to distract from her home life.
Mundanity is actually one of the USPs of The Bay. It feels nicely realistic in its little details: police officers complaining about the state of their office, or keeping themselves going by getting a Crunchie from the vending machine. It is also uniformly well-acted, with Leanne Best standing out in this ensemble as the distraught mother of the murder victim, and the plotting is solid.
A student has been found dead and the investigation delves into her family dynamic, her university life and romantic relationship. Everyone is a suspect, and the truth is revealed steadily over the course of six episodes. Daniel Ryan is the real heart of the show as DI Tony Manning, the boss doing the best he can while dealing with the many frustrations of the job.
The female officers in The Bay are all efficient, including newcomer Lou McLaren (Olwen May). Perhaps too efficient: do detectives really turn up at so many suspects' houses alone, and carry out solo arrests? And I have a confession to make about The Bay: even though I've watched previous series, when this one came around I had completely forgotten who the lead character was, other than she was a woman who replaced that other woman whose name I also couldn't remember.
The show has never had a memorable lead, because the writers have never given them any distinguishing features. But the fact it keeps getting recommissioned must mean that viewers are tuning in.
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