Saturday 7 July 2018

One of Us

This is an interesting little murder/mystery from the BBC in 2016 which I seem to have missed back then. Now showing on Netflix. It's set in a rural community in Scotland where everyone knows everyone's business and secrets are buried between people who keep themselves to themselves. You know the formula.

There's a couple who had just got married, been on honeymoon, returned home, she's heavily pregnant, they both get killed in their own home. The bloke who kills them is known to the audience from the outset. He heads off in a car he's stolen to the rural community, where this couple have come from, and gets his comeuppance!

The rest of the mini-series, spanned out over 4 hour-long episodes, is unfolding what's happened being spoon-fed bits of key information as we go, with one or two surprises along the way until in the end, the truth outs and we get the whole story, lock, stock and two smoking barrels. Kind of literally. Well, nearly!

The cast do a decent enough job. Ade Edmondson, Kate Bracken and Juliet Stevenson are in attendance and all act their parts of different sizes very well, but I think that the stand-out performance is from Laura Fraser, of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame, as she weaves together the threads of what's gone out in her role as Inspector against an apparently corrupt backdrop of her own which challenges value-bases. John Lynch is also worthy of mentioning in his role as head of one of the farming families, trying to hold together the clan and uphold his extremist religious take on proceedings.

It's slow-paced at times, but keeps you interested enough to continue viewing. The sets are very British TV-like, one minute feeling like the set of Emmerdale Farm, the next The Bill! The strength of the production is very much about the story-line and the development of the mystery. It's a good enough yarn, nicely told and well worth a viewing.

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