Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Eve Myles, Bradley Freegard, Aneiran Hughes, Hannah Daniel, Celia Imrie, Eiry Thomas, Mark Lewis Jones, Catherine Ayers, Rhashan Stone, Sian Phillips, Suzanne Packer, Keogh Kiernan, Matthew Aubrey, Sion Daniel Young, Demi Letherby, Lacey Jones, Martha Bright.
Some relationships are so toxic that it is comes as surprise that they have anything in common other than the attachment of blood, and quite often, the friends and those who seek mutual ground are left caught in the wake, the whirlpool sucking them under the safety of the shallow end, and in the end, they are normally the ones to pay the heaviest price.
Such a drama of life is mirrored in the life of Welsh lawyer Faith Howells, and in the third series of the acclaimed production of Keeping Faith, that whirlpool becomes a vortex of manipulation, of secrets finally exposed, and the most dangerous of riptides, the reveal of the mother/daughter complexity behind Faith’s abandonment issues that have been the force of nature and underlying current of the overall arc of the series.
The addition of Celia Imrie to the cast is inspired, and whilst she would be perhaps more expected to play the role with some degree of sympathy, Ms. Imrie captures the fearsome nature of the role she inhabits with absolute precision, the nature of the character’s reputation and sense of attention is palpable, it is constant, and one that drives the reflection of Eve Myles’ Faith Howells’ own atmosphere to a place where all the times she has been caught out and fighting for her life, more understandable and logical.
Keeping Faith has been a unique experience for many of its fans, the side-by-side filming of the three series in both in English and its main language of Welsh has given the drama a huge, and fully deserved, boost. The performance of Eve Myles, along with Aneirin Hughes as her ex-father-in-law, Tom, and certainly Sian Philips in this final series as Judge Alwen Owens, who frames the decision of law when it is about the individual matter of life and death to perfection.
Whilst the series perhaps suffered under the scrutiny of the Covid epidemic in the way it was filmed, it actually gave the storyline a more stand-offish feel which in many ways represented the way Faith’s own character was wavering between love and the heartache of the reappearance in her life of Rose Fairchild and her scheming manipulation of Faith’s children to worm her way back into the central character’s life.
A fitting finale for a series filled with explosive grace, a whirlpool of emotional drama captured in the presence of close-up facial expressions and conflict.
Ian D. Hall