The Tunnel: 1x01
So I made the decision not to watch the original Scandinavian drama Bron Broen before this, partly because I just don’t have time for both (I’m juggling about half-a-dozen shows at the moment) and partly because I didn’t want to watch two series in quick succession that have virtually the same plot.
You should know the setup by now: a dead body is found at the exact mid-point of the Eurotunnel, head in France and feet in Britain. Two sets of investigators are called in: on the French side is Elise Wassermann, a young woman with an unspecified condition (probably autism or Asperger’s), on the British is middle-aged Karl Roebuck, easy-going father of five (of three different mothers, though he’s happily married to the third).
Yet when the time comes to move the body, it becomes apparent that they’re dealing with not one but two victims: the head and torso of the missing French MP has been severed at the waist, and the legs belong to a British prostitute that went missing several months ago. Naturally, this forces the two sides to work together in order to discover the culprit.
This is not a “comfortable” crime-drama. Some might say that there’s no such thing, though that’s not even remotely true - depending on the detectives, the supporting characters, the tone, and the level of discretion in which certain scenes are handled you can read/watch plenty of crime-dramas that are “cosy” in nature and aren’t even remotely disturbing in content.
A good borderline example is Whitechapel (I’ve recently finished watching series four). Whitechapel revels in its gore, whilst The Tunnel is cold and clinical. Whitechapel has virtually no profane language or sexual content, whilst The Tunnel has plenty of it - from everyone. At the heart of Whitechapel is the warmth and trust that exists between Miles and Chandler, both of whom are good decent men that the audience can rely on to do the right thing. But in The Tunnel even our main characters Karl and Elise have their sharp edges, and the supporting characters (soon to be suspects) range from creeps to assholes. The colour palette is a dreary range of blues and greens and greys, and none of the sets look particularly appealing.
So somewhere between the warmth and humanism of the Whitechapel detectives and the over-the-top Gothic nature of the cases, I could find genuine enjoyment in watching. But my first impression of The Tunnel is that it isn’t a show you watch “for fun” - you watch it for the suspense and the uncomfortable questions that it raises. Already there is a link between the first episode’s victims: an MP who based her campaign on anti-immigration laws and a journalist who writes a bigoted opinion column.
Intertwined throughout these events are two minor subplots that are sure to be important later: first a young asylum seeker seeking help from a man called Stephen Beaumont who may or may not be a predator (he rejects her offer of sex when given the chance, yet still makes her uncomfortable by taking her photo and saying: “I like to remember the people I help”) and a middle-aged couple composed of an unpopular financer called Alain Joubert who is desperate to flee the country and his increasingly distressed wife Charlotte who doesn’t seem to have much idea of what she’s doing. How this is all connected to the main events remains to be seen - though a few tiny clues are given before the credits roll.
And - you knew I’d get to this eventually - I really loved seeing Angel Coulby again. She was only in a couple of scenes, but it was great to see her on-screen in a new project, playing Roebuck’s wife and mother-of-three. This has been the first post-Merlin role she’s taken (yes there was Dancing on the Edge in February, but that was filmed in the hiatus between season four and five of Merlin) making this feel like a real step forward and away from “the other show”. Plus the synopsis promises that she’ll be featured more prominently in later episodes.
I wouldn’t say it was the most engaging first episode of a miniseries, and it’s difficult to really warm to either of the protagonists (though that’s the point in one case) but I’m in. Let’s see how all this unfolds…