Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: John Simm, Richie Campbell, Robert Glenister, Craig Parkinson, Laura Elphinstone, Zoë Tapper, Clare Calbraith, Carolyn Pickles, Kem Hassan, Laura Aikman, Jennifer Macbeth, Ash Hunter, Miranda Heath, Brad Morrison, Neil Hobbs, Niall Greig Fulton, Alan Mahon, Jonny Magnanti, Sarah Leigh, Jensen Clayden, Alan Mooney, Bleu Landau, Phoebe Mulhall, Michelle Connolly, Rebecca Scroggs, Jessica Ellerby, Maria Crittell, Gordon Kennedy, Grant Burgin, Alan Turkington, David Sterne, Sam Hoare, Caroline Valdés, Henry Miller.
A broken watch is right twice a day, so it is stated when a person is surprised when someone, not known for their accuracy, correctly infers the clues at their disposal lead them to the correct view of who has committed the foulest of crimes, that they have taken another’s life, that they have desecrated the remains of a Dead Man’s Time.
Murdering Time, the slaughter of potential, and the evocative nature of the broken watch held in the hand that points to one of the most crucial aspects of any criminal investigation, we are handed the image of death at the moment it was taken…but what if it is the shadow of the aftermath that makes the mystery more appealing to the armchair detective, what if in the taking of life a child’s understanding of absence becomes an obsession; for in that time lost they alter the narrative of their own life. That is the wreck caused by murder, it steals everything and consumes all.
The fourth series of the Brighton-based detective drama, Grace, has found itself in the underbelly of old-fashioned gang warfare, the type that another famous literary south coast criminal, that of Graham Greene’s Pinky Brown, would have been a part of, the sense of terror and harm spreading its tendrils beyond the London smoke and infecting the believed gentility of the town’s nature.
Yet Time can be fraught with illusion, and as the strands of D.I, Grace’s own life start to fray and knot in ways that no ordinary person should be faced with, and as his own relationship with Cleo Morey, played by the ever-gracious Zoë Tapper, becomes one of bonded strength and familial commitment, so the darkness comes to stalk the Brighton detective.
It is in this portrayal of calm under pressure that John Simm once more raises the bar of the interpretation of modern policing, a cool exterior but one with a heart, and this is shown in the interaction between his character and that revealed by Gavin Daly, given life by the outstanding Robert Glenister. It is the sensitivity to the man who lost his father as a child, the death of a sister thanks to the greed of another, that the drama is heightened in sensible and accurate proportions.
The return of Grace is one in which to take heart at the excellence of television drama in the 21st Century, it appeals to the senses and the hope that policing in some form does actually care about the victims in their care.
Ian D. Hall