It ticks the Brit crime boxes (bad weather, scarred detectives), but this drama is deeply haunting

The Age

21-05-2025

The One That Got Away ★★★½
There must be times, one is sure, when the weather is fine in Great Britain. There have to be warm summer days occasionally – you see them on the cricket sometimes. But if you're a character in a British crime drama, you better wrap up warm because you'll wait a long time for the sun to shine.
When the subject is murder and our heroes are looking into the human heart's murkiest corners, grim skies will always loom overhead and there'll be an icy chill in the air, as Mother Nature does the right thing, by matching the atmosphere to the story. Which brings us to The One That Got Away and a small town in Wales, where horror lurks in the woods, the past lies in wait to devastate the present, and everything is, as always, cold, grey and foreboding.
There are two kinds of British murder mystery: the first, is where murder is a rather jolly puzzle to be solved, and the other is where murder is just one part of the crushing misery that suffuses all life. The One That Got Away is not, it quickly becomes apparent, jolly. It begins with a young nurse strangled in the woods and gets darker from there.
Called to the scene of the murder is DS Rick Sheldon (Richard Harrington), a happily married father whose wholesome domestic bonhomie is only slightly bruised by his naturally stressful career. But this case is different. Not only is the victim a friend of his wife's, the killing bears haunting hallmarks of a case he worked on years ago, the so-called 'Heart Knot Murders'.
It's not just the atrocity that's confronting him, but the memories that come flooding in to shatter his emotional equilibrium. And it gets even more complex, as his superior calls in some outside help: DI Ffion Lloyd (Elen Rhys), the officer who worked that previous case with Rick, and was also his fiancee. This is, for more than one reason, going to be a tough job.
The two leads are wonderful in their portrayal of people bearing deep scars who suddenly find that their lengthy efforts to move on with their lives have been stymied by circumstance.
As Rick Sheldon, Harrington is an unlikely thriller hero: greying, bespectacled and careworn, he brings classic middle-class dad energy, as he faces the sickening realities of a brutal world. He is a portrait of a weary man doing his duty even as the overwhelming sadness of the world bears down on him like a load of stones on his chest.