Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Anna Friel, Amanda Burton, Aaron McCusker, Hugo Speer, Ray Panthaki, Martin McCann, Kelly Gough, Michael Coglan, Laurence Kinlan, Valerie Lilley, Emily Flain, Eugene O’Hara, Paul Kennedy, Jorin Cooke, Orla Mullan, Julia Dearden, Mary Moulds, Zahra Ahmadi, Hayley McQuillan, Daniel Abbott.
A more contained, streamlined approach, does not always leave the viewer with the comfortable feel of having been enlightened, educated, or entertained. If anything, often less, can be just that, less than entertaining, less than sincere, less than remarkable.
When a programme or a series becomes anticipated for the raw depth and understanding of the plight of its main character, it has a duty to keep that high sense of drama continual, to keep the purpose of the character uppermost in the audience’s mind. Whilst visually there can no doubt of the grave insight into Anna Friel’s portrayal of Marcella, or indeed of the way that the drama is given huge respect by the acting of Ms. Friel, Amanda Burton as the matriarch Katherine Maguire, Ray Panthaki as Detective Inspector Ray Sangha, and Aaron McCusker as Finn Maguire, what does come across is the unease in the approach of the narrative, the object of the drama.
It is to Marcella Backland herself that the series is quite rightly the focus, her descent into what she perceives as madness in the first two series is only used as a means to an end in this third series, almost as if the act of immersing herself into a different mindset to tackle one of Northern Ireland’s most notorious crime families is to highlight the severe crack in her psyche, the embracing of the split personality.
Whereas the first two series offered an insight into how the condition was hindering her a mother and an officer of the law, this third way of looking upon the character as cold, calculating and happy to be at the centre of attention, seems to be forced, less than in tune and more concerned with bringing as much detail of other people into view, and this does not do the series justice, especially when those being placed under the lens have only a fraction of interest to do with the scene overall.
Where the third series of Marcella does work, indeed excels, is in the concentration of the writing in the opening episodes of the effect that the drug trade in the local estate has on the people, and rather than making the Maguire’s the emphasis of the series, perhaps it should have been the other way round, the ruined lives and fear being in congress with Marcella’s own personal mental health.
Whilst the third series is watchable, and no doubt important as a set up if there should be a fourth series, the feeling of being forced does not leave the audience’s mind, not so much artificial, but certainly not compelling. With two extremely superb series behind them, eventually there had to be a drop off in terms of production; it is just a shame in this case as arguably there was another way to go.
Ian D. Hall