Having
noticeably ended both of their hugely popular BBC One shows, Hustle and Spooks, within months of one another, it was clear Kudos
productions must have had something else up their sleeves. That something else,
it transpires, was Mayday, the drama
that most critics have pegged a curious mix between Midsomer Murders and ‘insert other mildly sinister programme of
choice here’ – I’m going to go with Lost.
Set in
a small rural town with ‘filmed in leafy Surrey’ all over it like so much luminous
yellow police tape, Mayday is a
meticulously planned whodunit tracing the disappearance and possible murder of
a teenage May Queen in the creepy local woods. (You see what they’ve done there
with the title? Clever, eh?) Aired over five consecutive nights, the show
introduces us to several male suspects, with very little in the way of subtlety
in all honesty, although the damn thing’s so addictively intriguing that it
hardly matters.
They’re all suspicious seeming in their own ways, with the
glorious Peter Firth, an epithet I shall ever more refer to him by, reprising
his association with the company to play Malcolm Spicer, a property developer
whose career was ruined by the missing hippy girl. Peter McDonald is equally shifty
as angry policeman Alan with everything to lose, alongside silver fox Aiden
Gillen as a convincingly damaged and leery widower. Other suspects include schizophrenic
tree hugger Seth, (Tom Fisher), to whom I spent most of my five nights watching
the show wishing to donate a reassuring cuddle, and self-proclaimed leader of
the search party, Seth’s loutish brother Steve (Sam Spruell).
Got
all that? Good.
Convincingly
shifty though they are, with Peter Firth, sorry, glorious Peter Firth,
especially excellent, it is not with the grown up blokes that the best
performances of this programme lie. No, no. I have but three things to say
about the best performances in Mayday, and
they are these, Max Fowler, Leslie Manville and Sophie Okenedo. Okay four
things, I’m going to say Sophie Okenedo twice. Max Fowler is absolutely spot-on
in his performance of Everett’s troubled teenage son Linus, managing to give the
character a level of pithy confidence, despite his dark and desperate exterior.
He also carries off his character’s crippling crush on Hattie’s distraught twin
Caitlin-the-plot-device (Leila Mimmack), although there’s no way he looks
seventeen. Leslie Manville is completely captivating as Gail Spicer, taking us
on an incredible character arc I would rather like to have continued long after
the series ended- from put upon spouse to sarcastic and independent, we’re with
her all the way. And last but not least, Sophie Okenedo. I’m working on an
epithet for her but I haven’t quite got there yet. If Leslie Manville is
captivating, Okenedo is practically spell-binding in this role. Quietly put
upon by her temper fuelled husband, Fiona finds a new path for herself in this
time of local crisis, stopping at nothing to, as her husband Alan terms it, ‘put
things right’.
As the
series goes on, more and more clue as to the back stories of our suspects are
revealed, allowing us to form our own conclusions as an audience, as we are
drip fed just enough details to keep us coming back for more, but never quite
enough to fully twig whodunit. I apologise for that tree pun, given the circumstances, and indeed the image above.
The simplistic format of the show, then, revolves from start to finish around
these men, their lives and their potential motive. However, given my previous
paragraph about the fantastic performances in the show, I can’t help but wish
there’d been just a little more variety in the suspects. The female
performances are indeed excellent, but with every male character in Mayday almost wholly without sympathy,
it would have perhaps been interesting if there had been a female suspect or
two as well. I actually found myself inventing motives for several of them just
so that, in my head at least, they could be a little more involved.
That
said, the slow reveal of information is done well, although the time commitment
of almost a week with little to no answers revealed until around Episode 4 will
not be for everyone. And is it worth that time commitment? Well yes, I think it
largely is. Although I do also think that with these things, it is patently apparent
from about the half-way point whether it is going to end in a glorious (Peter
Firth again) conclusion with all answers handed to you on a plate, as well as
gasp or two at the truth to boot, and maybe a car chase. Or, whether it will
end in a slight fizzle, leaving you happy with the series overall, but a tad
disappointed with the ending. It happened with last year’s The Paradise, much as I adored it, and alas it has happened here,
too. Having spent four days looking forward to next episode, musing on woods
based pagan rituals and small town secrets, the last episode left me with more
questions than answers. This is never really what you want from a mystery
drama, especially when you’re up against good ol’ David Tennant in a
suspiciously similar programme over on ITV.
Overall,
good, very good in places, but let itself down a tad at the end.
You
can watch the whole of Mayday here,
on BBC Iplayer.
Jen
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