For two series, The Bay (ITV) was a Morecambe-set detective drama starring Morven Christie as family liaison officer DS Lisa Armstrong. Then Christie moved on to pastures new, and a new actress has taken her place. Marsha Thomason is DS Jenn Townsend, newly arrived in town and slotting straight into Armstrong’s place. The show aims to crack on as normal, just with a change of personnel.
Instantly, the character isn’t as likeable. Of course, she’s a harried working mother (funny how dramas never kick off with working fathers making the family’s breakfast or looking for stray bits of PE kit), and she crashes the car on the school run. The other driver is understandably annoyed yet, despite the accident being entirely her fault, Townsend whips out her warrant card and threatens to arrest him for a public order offence. Come back, Lisa, we miss you.
Townsend has some unspecified issue in her past – she was on the fast track to promotion in Manchester but left for “personal reasons”, she had a leave of absence that she doesn’t want to talk about, and she freaks out when confronted with verbal aggression. But none of these things makes her sympathetic. She also fails to endear herself to her colleagues, slapping down DS Clarke (Andrew Dowbiggin) when he makes a remark about Muslims.
Does likeability matter, though? Shows such as these work because they’re efficient police procedurals, and the storyline here was perfectly all right: a promising young boxer found dead in the bay, having suffered a vicious beating. One of his brothers has a history of petty criminality, and his mother has a boyfriend who is played by a notable character actor (Vincent Regan) so must have some involvement in the plot other than supportively making the tea.
The victim’s other brother is deaf, presenting the rare opportunity for a deaf actor – Nadeem Islam – to have a role in a mainstream drama. He finds a friend in DS Karen Hobson (Erin Shanagher), who handily knows British Sign Language. The regular supporting cast is strong, and it’s always a sign of quality when Gary Lewis pops up in a show, here playing the boxing club boss.
It’s a decent whodunit to get you through a long January, but it won’t be joining any lists of great detective dramas.
