Deadwater Fell: Acorn TV’s Miniseries Is a Brief, Compelling Crime Story
Photo Courtesy of Acorn TV
A tragedy in a rural village that reveals the secrets of that small town is a very particular crime genre that has provided the general framework (be it Scottish, English, Welsh) for decades of UK television. But instead of reveling in melodrama or a mind-boggling number of twists, Deadwater Fell (from Grantchester’s Daisy Coulam), tells a short, refreshingly straight-forward story of a crime that reverberates through the souls of those who thought they knew the victims, and the perpetrator, better than they did.
David Tennant stars as Tom Kendrick, the lone survivor of a house fire in a Scottish town that killed his wife Kate (Anna Madeley) and their three young daughters. From the start, though, there are clues that this was no accident, and like any good crime drama, the first episodes call almost every character into question. Interweaving the present with flashbacks that provide increasing context into Kate and Tom’s relationship, the couple’s close friend Jess Milner (Cush Jumbo) begins to suspect there is more hidden here than the police seem to realize. But she’s dealing with her own issues, as she and her boyfriend Police Sergeant Steve Campbell (Matthew McNulty) attempt another emotionally-taxing round of IVF.
Deadwater Fell, though somewhat obtusely named, is a quiet four-part series that intertwines Jess’ personal pain with the closeness she has with Steve’s children from his first marriage, alongside her work at a local school which is where she first met Kate. The series lightly touches on a number of interesting threads, from Tom and Kate’s secrets to the grief that the other children feel at the loss of their friends, to issues of control and manipulation. But it also knows that sometimes just a suggestion or a brief reveal are enough. The series could easily have been blown out to 8 or 10 parts, but it would have been worse for it. Instead, Deadwater Fell is a compelling mystery and emotional, psychologically-tinged story that knows when to play its cards, take the win, and leave the table.