Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jason Watkins, Tala Gouveia, Claire Skinner, Charlie Jones, Bhavik C. Pankhania, Ace Bhatti, Daniel Lapaine, Lydia Leonard, Pixie Lott, Dipo Ola, John Gordon Sinclair, Toby Stephens, Rico Canadinhas, Siobhan O’ Carroll.
A return to the screens for a detective series that has grown with stature as it progresses to exemplify the sense of charismatic fortitude required when placing two oddly matched people together in order to solve a murder, is as welcome as a sunny, cloudless day after a month of constant storms that threaten to overwhelm the population with a sense of permanent gloom and floods of grief.
McDonald & Dodds might not stand up to the depth carried by other on-screen detectives such as Morse, Poirot, Edmund Reid of Ripper Street, The Fall detective Stella Gibson, or Jeremy Brett’s pinpoint and distinguished time as Sherlock Holmes, but it has the genuine quirkiness of the mismatched and socially incompatible investigating the drama of Bath’s seedier side to life with a mutual respect for each other’s insights and dedication, and occasional annoyances; and it is to this that the series in its fourth outing starts in a creative, positive, and entertaining way.
The Rule Of Three is a subtle and ingenious way to delve into the world of spies and explores the depths that some people are willing to go to keep their secrets safe, to maintain their agency of unrelenting damage to society and even bring death to those who might uncover their allegiances and darker aspects of existence.
In the depths of subterfuge and double-sided deception, it takes actors of extraordinary persuasion to make the dramatic point being made in the episode, and with Toby Stephens giving his usual insanely gifted performance as Mark Holgate, the presence of the crime of murder is taken to its most logical extremes, pushing the dynamic to be a force of discovery of just how the pair, once again played with fruitful pleasure by Jason Watkins and Tala Gouveia, cope in the face of such duplicity and constant evasion.
The Rule Of Three is of dark reason, the cases we see dropped, quietly forgotten and shifted to the back burner because of state interferences, thankfully in this case can be seen for what it is, nothing short of a deception, a reality created by a system to create chaos just to preserve a secret. This sense of scheming is highlighted with precision in the first of three well-written tales involving the wonderfully incompatible pair.
Ian D. Hall