Sometimes shows just take on too much plot. Too many threads are unraveled at once, and are not tied back together completely. A new British mystery series tries to combine a climate change disaster, a commentary on the clash between motherhood and a career in a male-oriented environment, and a good old-fashioned murder mystery, among other threads.
Opening Shot: Scenes of a massive rainstorm and flooding, with radio reports about the flooding playing in the background.
The Gist: Days of unprecedented rain have caused massive flooding in the Yorkshire town where PC Joanna Marshall (Sophie Rundle) is a patrol cop. She goes on a call with her partner, Deepa Das (Tripti Tripuraneni) where a woman is trying to get her infant out her car, which is stuck in rapidly-rising waters. As she gets out the car seat, it floats away; Joanna goes after it, then she sees a mystery man jump in the water. He manages to get the infant in Joanna’s arms before he’s swept away.
This is when we find out that Joanna is pregnant, and when word gets back to her husband, Pat Holman (Matt Stokoe), a detective in the same department, he calls her, concerned that she’s putting herself and their baby at risk.
The next day, after the rain stops, much of the town is under three feet of water. An older couple who stayed in their house, thinking they had flood guards in place, end up dying from CO poisoning when water comes up from the basement and floods their generator. Joanna’s mother Molly (Lorraine Ashbourne) serves food to people at the school where she works, which is serving as a shelter, and she bemoans how poorly the council reacted to this emergency.
Joanna is called to the garage of a building where a body is found in an elevator. There’s no ID on the body, but it’s assumed that he just got caught in there when the flood waters rose and then drowned. But the autopsy finds that he was killed by a blow to the head and likely placed in the elevator. Joanna, who is starting her detective training, becomes fascinated by the case, though Matt warns her to not question the detectives, including him, working the case. But she decides to take some matters in her own hands, especially when she has to take a few days off after passing out (she makes sure to leave an OOO that she’s not on maternity leave, much as Matt would like her to be) to investigate on her own.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Written by Mick Ford (Stay Close), After The Flood feels like a standard British police drama merged with an climate-change-disaster miniseries like Five Days At Memorial.
Our Take: After The Flood is a show that’s trying to do too much. Is it a murder mystery? Is it a commentary on climate change? Is it about how sexism still reigns in law enforcement? Is it about a cop who will skirt the rules to solve a crime? It feels like it’s about all of these things, but not particularly focused on anything in particular.
Having all of this jumbled into one series might be OK if we felt that these stories would get connected somehow. There are threads here that are easily intertwined, like Joanna’s ethical breaches tied to her frustration about how her own husband seems to want her to be a stay-at-home mom. She fudged how long she was pregnant in order to get into the detective training program, which is an interesting insight into how she regards her career versus how Matt does. Matt’s sister’s awful family coming to stay after being flooded out seems to be another way she gets disregarded.
That would be an interesting plot for a cop drama, wouldn’t it? But then we get larded down with the flood story, and Joanna’s mother Molly’s run for the town council because of her concerns. And the central murder mystery seemingly has little to do with the actual flood, except for the fact that he was found after the water receded.
While there may be a chance that these stories will come together during the season’s six episodes, there certainly isn’t any evidence that it will after the first. It makes for a muddled show that even overwhelms the magnetic performance from Rundle as Joanna.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Joanna finds a genealogy match for the victim’s DNA on the sly, and when the man’s sister calls, Joanna finds out some surprising news. Then she has to hide the call from Matt.
Sleeper Star: The side story of Molly Marshall, played by Lorraine Ashbourne, running for council might be interesting, or it might be a distraction.
Most Pilot-y Line: Joanna asks one of the detectives about the toxicology report on the body of the “lift man”, the day after he was found. Can someone explain why on TV toxicology reports are immediate when in real life they take weeks or months?
Our Call: SKIP IT. While there are some good performances in After The Flood, there are too many plot threads going on at once to give viewers a chance to concentrate on any particular part of the story.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
