I Watch TV: The Red King

 

The Red King

Police Sergeant Grace Narayan is sent to the isolated island of St Jory, off the coast of Wales. She’s unofficially in disgrace after turning in two fellow officers who beat a rapist, crippling him, after he got off on a technicality*. On her last day on the mainland she’s shuffled into an office to avoid meeting those officers, meets another officer who kills himself, claiming there’s no escaping “them”. This doesn’t get resolved for another five episodes, and frankly Grace has enough other stuff going on.

The island is strange. It was cut off in 1918 for five years to avoid the flu pandemic. There’s a syncretic pagan religion, the True Way, that everyone says is just for the tourists. There’s a local, young, constable Owen, who is a bit stuck in his ways; ways set by the retired sergeant Gruffudd. He’s unimpressed, old-fashioned (there’s just a tiny bit of racial tension, not resolved when he, a Welshman, declares that she’s more English than he will ever be).

The island also gets cut off annually, with a storm known as the Widow’s Wail, that not only stops boats, it cuts off phone, internet, radio etc. Last year, just before this happened, a teenager vanished, the son of Dr Ian Prideaux. Owen and Gruffud had done a search, but he’s last been seen heading for the harbour, and everyone assumed he’d left the island as young people often did. Grace goes looking, and finds a body in an unexpected place.

Every episode brings a revelation, the various odd characters appearing, then showing a new aspect. A new suspect, a new motive. The show gleefully flirts with folk horror, especially The Wicker Man, alternately offering parallels and alternatives. The True Way is syncretic, and the island is in the 21^st century and multi-cultural – or at least it’s a short boat trip from the 21^st century. If the show relies a bit heavily on weirdness, it does at least attempt to confront some questions – what do you do when the justice system fails? And when an island is cut off, from where comes authority? Law or order? It’s a weird occult murder mystery that has some questions about the underlying ideas of the police procedural, and if some of it is deliberate red herrings or bizarre orchestration by people, at least it’s in the aid of something with some meat, not just a twisty turny plot.

Lots of actual Welsh actors playing Welsh characters too.

Watch This: Clever setting for off-beat murder mystery with outrageous characters
Don’t Watch This: Very impressed with itself, and especially how it thwarts our viewpoint characters

* This, one of the themes at the heart of the show, never quite gets put into words on this topic – that the police are supposed to uphold the law not break it. Despite this being part of the tangle at the end.