Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Richard Dormer, Jodi Balfour, Paterson Joseph, Laerke Winther, Shannon Tarbet, Ray Stevenson, Kieran Bew, Michael Wildman, Joseph Macnab, Peter Coe, Alex Gillson, Tuncay Gunes, Susan Hughes, Faye Castelow, Mimi Ndiweni, Annabel Bates, Rosalind Eleazar, Paul Rhys, Tanya Reynolds, Clive Russell, Charlotte Dylan, Michael Shaeffer, Clare Holman, Rebecca Lacey, Reece Ritchie.
To grab the attention of a world in which almost eight billion people are crying out to be heard, to have some sort of justification that their lives matter, that their thoughts, opinions, desires and existence are more than just a tick box on a Government demographic, is arguably slim, so many people, so many reasons to have a dream and yet in the end we all could be seen as relics in our own time; that our lives have been lived the wrong way round.
To grab the attention you have see the world differently, view it in a way that might seem odd, to work out the crime, the play, the life from its end to its very beginning.
A crime, a murder, is not always a straight forward progression from the moment of the act to the restoration of justice, it has either been planned cold heartedly in advance or it the culmination of years of unseen abuse, the scenes of many acts of offence and wrong-doings; to catch the killer you must understand where their own past lays.
Rellik takes that point and shows that a detective/murder story can be shown the wrong way round, no need for the audience to be led down a path which only makes them think, instead it crosses paths with our own fears of connection, that something we may have done, we may have witnessed in the past, somehow affects the future; that our lives are not a strict linier time line, it is a jumbled mess which needs policing.
To grab the attention you need to be something different, you have to be prepared to endure perhaps an unusual face to the world and in Rellik that face is scarred; the image of the current abusive trend of spraying acid over someone’s face is a violent and pathological disease. To show this in a drama series brings the discussion out into the open and one that needs addressing quickly and with full resolution.
In Richard Dormer, Jodi Balfour and Paterson Joseph characters, the storyline is given a massive sense of urgency, of critical poise and especially for Richard Dormer this is role which perfectly demonstrates his vitality as an actor portraying anger with a creative talent that deserves to be more recognised.
Rellik illustrates perfectly that not all dramas need to be seen in the same way, that a different way of directing and writing keeps the genre alive and screaming for more.
Ian D. Hall