Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: John Simm, Zoë Tapper, Craig Parkinson, Richie Campbell, Laura Elphinstone, Brad Morrison, Clare Calbraith, Boni Adeliyi, Andy Apollo, Rakie Ayola, Lizzie Back, Steve Broad, Joanna Brookes, Eliot Cable, Charlotte Christof, Alexander Cobb, Darcy Collins, Thomas Coombes, Rai Endah, Heather Ann Foster, Ernest Gromov, Darragh Hand, Robert Hands, Molly Harris, Jo Herbert, Sam Hoare, Rob Jarvis, Claudia Jolly, Max Krupski, Kiera Lester, Sibylla Meienberg, Henry Miller, Luke Norris, Jack Pierce, Tyler-Jo Richardson, Rebecca Scoggs, Nicholas Tizzard, Ben Wiggins, Charlotte Workman, Jay Oliver Yip.
The watchers have a certain direct sense of control over our lives, they encroach and keep details of our movements to the point where should we complain, they will accuse with purpose that we obviously have something to hide, that our secrets are caught in a net and they can, should they wish, us them to discredit, to harm, to even punish us, at the whim of a CCTV movement.
It is an age-old question, “Who watches the watchers”, but now the amount of obscene power that lays in every country at the flick of a switch, the time for regulation has passed, what it is needed now is a revolution against the machine.
The third series of the Brighton-based police drama Grace, Dead Like You, kicks off with arguably its finest story to date, one that any writer of the genre would have been proud to see being brought to life. The sense of time between murders is a powerful reminder that crime never rests, it never truly stops, it just requires someone to keep the murderer in check for a while and to keep the secret.
What Dead Like You does well is remind the viewer that behind the image is a person, on both sides of the camera. There is a sense of destruction sought by the one watching, the willingness to erase a life, and then there is the forever, those framed in sequence before they leave the real, before they fall foul of the grainy aura and flick of a switch inside someone’s head.
It also tackles the lasting effects of abuse, the way it handed down from abuser to victim, who also may become the abuser themselves. It is a damning state of affairs that humanity at its very worst keeps the cycle going, perpetually destroying a life, and whilst the disturbing details in which this episode of Grace showcases leave crumbs of comfort that the watchers will do their job with our security in mind, there is the knowledge that out there, somewhere, is a detective, a policeman, like Roy Grace who will never stop until your life is given the voice to go with the image captured.
With terrific performances from Craig Parkinson, Thomas Coombes, and Ben Wiggins, Dead Like You is a masterpiece of detective drama for television, unrelenting, offering little chance to hide from your fears, poignant, and destructive, a feast for the senses to cling to.
Ian D. Hall