'I don't find any of this creepy at all. Remember, I'm from the city.' Photos: Handout
Like another ITV series with Red in the title, The Red King is a mixed bag – an interesting mystery stretched thin over too many instalments.Unlike the Richard Armitage/Jing Lusi thriller Red Eye, however, this one dials back the histrionics... well, by just a bit. And it swaps international intrigue for creepy folk-horror elements, a la The Wicker Man.
It mainly revolves around policewoman Grace Narayan (Anjili Mohindra, The Sara Jane Adventures, Bodyguard, Get Millie Black), who is posted to the remote Welsh island of St Jory as a punishment for standing by her professional principles and informing on two colleagues who beat up a sexual predator.
St Jory is one of those close-knit little communities where rumours persist of a century-old pagan cult called the True Way, which the locals insist is now defunct.
Still, cult imagery features prominently in the parades thrown for tourists and tends to linger even in the off-season.
The island's residents – some, at least – are still troubled by the disappearance of a well-liked local boy over a year ago, though most seem to have written him off as a runaway.
People in such settings tend to view anyone digging up old (figurative) bones with disfavour, and Grace immediately runs into hostility when she starts poking around the case.
'If you need help with my fellow islanders, I'll gladly be your bridge(rton) over the waters.'
The bulk of this antagonism comes from her predecessor, the now-retired Detective Sergeant Gruffudd Prosser (Mark Lewis Jones, Donny's dad in Baby Reindeer), who by all accounts conducted a merely superficial investigation of the lad's disappearance before declaring the case closed.
Gruffud is also the source of much of this series' weakness. Created by Toby Whithouse, who gave us the ghost-vampire-werewolf-roomies comedy-drama Being Human, The Red King has much of its early intrigue fairly drowned out by the character's overly loud bluster.
Granted, he does have good reason for being hostile towards Grace for poking about, with Jones' considerable contributions to the penultimate instalment's dramatic impact diminished by the one-note tone of his earlier appearances.
Even with a relatively short span of six episodes, this one keeps circling back to the same turf far too often over the first four, only coming together in the final two episodes as all the principal players' plans go off the rails.
The Red King does have its share of quirky and/or interesting supporting parts, such as the island's "noble" Lady Heather Nancarrow (Adjoa Andoh, Bridgerton), Grace's earnest subordinate Owen (James Bamford), the local innkeeper's "naughty" daughter Winter (Maeve Courtier-Lilley, Gran Turismo), and the missing boy's grieving and frequently drunk dad Ian (Marc Warren), the local doctor.
One more interesting character, a senior cop from the mainland, appears and disappears right after an "oh-no-she-didn't!" moment in the second episode.
'I know I don't look old enough to shave... because the constabulary recruited me right out of primary school.'
But the show mainly centres on Grace, her prying and her earnestness, which make her a largely admirable character who goes charging about like a bull in a china shop... and if she actually ate something once in a while (she keeps refusing meals, which becomes a key plot point later), she wouldn't suffer fainting spells at the worst possible moment.
Nonetheless, Mohindra makes a fine meal of her character's thankless, unwelcome role and quickly wins over the viewer, if not the locals in her new posting.
Between all the shouting (by Gruffud), the unwelcoming stares (from most of the islanders) and the cliched jump scares, The Red King does sparkle at times with sharp and near-sarky dialogue, with some off-hand pop culture references too.
One golden opportunity slips by, however, when Grace calls in Dr Ian to declare a nearly-headless man dead. As priceless as Warren's look is in the moment, a borrowed line from Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch would have immediately redeemed the show for all its earlier misdemeanours.
One can dream. The absence of ex-parrot references and excess of swagger notwithstanding, The Red King is a mostly compelling, character-driven look at how convictions can inspire cruelty and how you can stand on principle, even if it won't always support you.
The Red King is available on BBC Player.
Summary:
The wicker lady
