Marchlands

The weather outside is pretty grim, rain throwing down, wind battering the trees and the house, so I’m sat in my lounge under a blanket with the fire on. The atmosphere seems nicely set to watch the first installment of ITV’s new drama Marchlands.

This 5 part serial will tell the story of three families, over a number of decades, who live in the titular house haunted by the drowned daughter of one of the couples. The concept instantly grabbed my attention, as it was a nice deviation from the usual courtroom/crime/detective drama that ITV churns out on a regular basis, so I thought I'd give it a watch.

The episode opens with a clever and seemless montage, which introduces our protagonists and the parallel scenarios instantly set up the idea that all their lives will intertwine and be connected. The attention to detail in some of the match shots shows the care taken by the director (as presumably 1968 was filmed on the same redressed set as 2010, some weeks later ) and the art direction helps to easily differentiate between the three generations, whilst retaining the feel that the house is unchanged.

Sadly, the same care and attention doesn’t appear to have been given to the script, which is at times obvious, and at worse patronising.

Predictably enough, the youngest daughter of the middle couple starts to have visions of an imaginary friend names Alice. The staple creepy/psychic child (executed perfectly in The Innocents, then populised in The Sixth Sense) is an overused plot device of the genre, which has been done a lot better a lot of times before.

And some of the dialogue was pure, unnecessary exposition - for example Nisha (who has moved into the house in the present day) finds a photo of the young girl, and when stripping the wallpaper in her bedroom uncovers a mural with the words “Alice in the Woods”. She then feels inclined to voice her thoughts: “Alice in the woods, which must make you Alice”. Condescending explanatory dialogue like this shows a lack of confidence in a script, and the audiences ability to understand it.

The odd thing is there are some clever aspects to the script, like the ongoing motif of water signaling Alice’s presence within the house, and the claustrophobia induced by the viewer very rarely being able to escape the confines of Marchlands. Furthermore the hints that our present day protagonist knows more about the history of the house than he is letting on provides some added mystery - it’s just that some of the execution is poor.

And for me, Alex Kingston was a bit of a disappointment. Fresh from her role as Prof./Dr. River Song (depending on when we meet her - wibbly wobbly timey wimey) in Doctor Who she appears to be the star billing to draw attention to this programme. However, her character is only slightly more believable than her Yorkshire accent (having been born and bred in Leeds, I feel like I’m allowed to pass comment!). If this is what ‘production moving North and becoming less London centric’ means, it’s a little disheartening (rant over).

Basically, this opening episode didn’t grab me, nor did it make me want to set up series record on V+. It’s a shame, because visually and directorially it’s well executed. The story itself seems interesting enough, but the script lets it down; not enough bait was laid to instantly hook me and entice me back, and some of the writing was so jarring that any drama or tension trying to be built was lost.

It wasn’t poor, and I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it. Put it this way, if I’m in next Thursday at 9, I’ll probably watch part two. If I’m not, I won’t feel like I’ve missed out on much.