Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Eve Myles, Katherine Kelly, Clara Ruggaard, Victoria Hamilton, Elliot Edusah, Raphael Sowole, Karen Ascoe, Lu Corfield, Michael Lumsden, Lee Boardman, Peter De Jersey.
The second series of The Crow Girl, adapted from Erik Axl Sund’s riveting novel, is one that pushes the watcher into the realms of disassociation, of the complexity of multiple personality, and whilst the first series was unabashed in its portrayal, the second is one where the sheer cognitive struggle of holding such memories and demons in the mind is powerfully, robustly, presented as DCI Jeanette Kilburn closes down on the killer but also finds her own mind is questioned as her actions in the face of lust and abandonment cause her to neglect the obvious truth.
The six-episode series plays well with the dynamic of the women at the forefront of the murderous play, the desperation of feelings framed and impressively portrayed by the actors in question, Eve Myles, Katherine Kelly, Clara Ruggaard, and Victoria Hamilton in the roles of law and order and the polar opposite, not criminality as such, but the chaos of the misunderstood relishing in the echoes of disassociation of identity.
It is to these four women that the process of investigation and revelation hangs and to each they play their part with absolute style and sincerity, a sheer volume of expression that acts as a sounding board for objective madness parading in the guise of the ill and the dissatisfied.
Eve Myles once again shows the depth of own character as she tears down the walls of what was considered the norm, of being drawn into an affair with the woman at the heart of the case, of, as she describes superbly towards the end of the final episode, of losing her mind in a way that Katherine Kelly’s Sophia Craven cannot fathom due to her own need for salvation, shows why is one of Britain’s most formidable actors of our time.
The Crow Girl is obsessive watching, its very nature of unpeeling layers of information and the undoing of control strikes at the fear in all that their life is one step from unravelling due to circumstances or decisions that seem at the start perhaps ludicrous to suggest or damning in their execution.
An unbridled true thriller, one that is unafraid to cast doubt on the response on the individual, The Crow Girl is absolutely one of the best detective dramas of recent times.
Ian D. Hall