I'm going to review this as season one, even though no further series have yet been confirmed, it does feel like this was an attempt to establish a character who could return. I watched the show purely because it was the next one alphabetically on Paramount Plus.
Reeling from a traumatic event, David Hunter (Harry Treadaway) is called back into his former career, as a gifted forensic pathologist, when a murder occurs in the small town he lives in. Despite his proximity to the case, the police ask him to assist and finding the killer helps bring him a degree of closure. Now looking to work again, he heads to a remote Scottish Island to assist the Police there with another murder.
It's hard not to start with the slightly odd pacing of this series. It's six episodes and two cases, but not divided into three episodes for each case. The initial case takes two episodes to resolve, before we jump to the second that introduces a new and very different location and cast - save for Treadaway's character. He's good, as you might imagine, though Treadaway's history of playing villains had me assuming that he might have more to do with the initial murder than he actually does - and I had in my head an interesting story of a pathologist trying to cover up his own murders - but that's not what this is. It's actually a fairly traditional police procedural, with even the lead characters trauma being something that you've seen a million times before.
That's the shows ultimate problem really. It's really nicely performed and there are recognisable faces scattered throughout both casts, but it's all in service of a really standard "ITV on a Sunday evening" type show, lacking in some form of way of differentiating itself from the dozens of other similar shows.
Having started, I'd probably watch more - but I'd also be willing to let it go.
Reeling from a traumatic event, David Hunter (Harry Treadaway) is called back into his former career, as a gifted forensic pathologist, when a murder occurs in the small town he lives in. Despite his proximity to the case, the police ask him to assist and finding the killer helps bring him a degree of closure. Now looking to work again, he heads to a remote Scottish Island to assist the Police there with another murder.
It's hard not to start with the slightly odd pacing of this series. It's six episodes and two cases, but not divided into three episodes for each case. The initial case takes two episodes to resolve, before we jump to the second that introduces a new and very different location and cast - save for Treadaway's character. He's good, as you might imagine, though Treadaway's history of playing villains had me assuming that he might have more to do with the initial murder than he actually does - and I had in my head an interesting story of a pathologist trying to cover up his own murders - but that's not what this is. It's actually a fairly traditional police procedural, with even the lead characters trauma being something that you've seen a million times before.
That's the shows ultimate problem really. It's really nicely performed and there are recognisable faces scattered throughout both casts, but it's all in service of a really standard "ITV on a Sunday evening" type show, lacking in some form of way of differentiating itself from the dozens of other similar shows.
Having started, I'd probably watch more - but I'd also be willing to let it go.
