FAVE RAVE - Passenger

This ITV crime drama, has been billed as a cross between Happy Valley and Twin Peaks. And it does indeed pinch a few of its main tropes from these programmes. To which I would add, a dash of the supernatural from Stranger Things. But it wears this borrowed lineage very knowingly and lightheartedly. It casually references Broadchurch, that Andrew Burton, Passenger's writer acted in. Plus a passing witty reference to Vera, that Passenger's central star Wunmi Mosako, was on the cast of for a couple of years.

This playfulness with its humour, is one of Passenger's central charms. Set in the fictional town of Chadder Vale, somewhere in the Pennines, a short bus journey away from Manchester. But it might just as well be somewhere out in the wilds of Canada. When it opens, Chadder Vale is in the middle of an unseasonable heavy period of snow. A girl had gone missing, a dear stag is found disemboweled, something weird is going on in the forest, and a notoriously evil man has been released early from prison and is returning home. Five years ago Chadder was caught up in some sort of atrocity that no one can talk about, let alone come fully to terms with.

In the middle of this is Riya (Wunmi Mosako) a detective moved there from Manc Met. She believes something is disturbingly awry in the heart of Chadder Vale. Her boss constantly dismisses her ideas and undermines her, as her main aim is Chadder Vale winning The Best Kept Town award. Riya's sidekicks, Nish ( Arian Nik ) and Ali ( Ella Bruccoleri ) both are geeky and obsessed with meaningless questions of choice - sich as - 'which would you chose, to have completely white eyeballs or a crystal nose ?' All because they are being chronically under used. The main thing they are allowed to investigate is local bin thefts. A Swedish woman has apparently gone missing, yet oddly no one apart from Riya, appears at all concerned about it.

The story throws more than a few curve balls and bizzarely inexplicable occurances. Most of which never get adequately explained. The end of this first series makes it clear a second is most likely already in the can. It resolves a few strands, but leaves us with so much more left unanswered. I was for a change, not at all irritated by this unresolved state of affairs. I remain intregued and highly amused by this series, and hope its follow up comes soon.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8