Marcella Season 1 Review

Marcella (2016-)
Season 1 (2016)

Created by: Hans Rosenfeldt, Nicola Larder
Starring:  Anna Friel, Nicholas Pinnock, Sinéad Cusack, Harry Lloyd, Laura Carmichael, Jamie Bamber
Rating: --/TV-MA

Marcella Season 1.

Plot: 
This British show is a Netflix original. After quitting the police force when she became pregnant, eleven years later Marcella rejoins after a divorce and the return of a serial killer she never caught.

Verdict
This seemed like a tired story and a bit like Luther (2010-2015) but with a woman lead. After four episodes I really liked the convoluted and twisting story, and I could forgive the contrivances. When I got to episode six I began to doubt whether the show could deliver on the premise and provide believable answers. With episode eight, the conclusion was a bit underwhelming. The plot slowly becomes more contrivance than clever, and there are major questions the show outright ignores. Despite my annoyances, the first half is a fun thrill ride, unfortunately the ride stops short.
It depends.

Review

The first episode employed the "how we got here" trope, opening with Marcella bloodied and bruised in a bathtub before the text "12 hours earlier" flashed across the screen. This trope is used as a crutch far too often, and now can't be used by anyone.

Marcella - A snappy dresser she isn't.

Marcella is broken. A divorce has rocked her world and it just gets worse. We soon see her smash her husband Jason's car repeatedly with a tire iron to show how she's impulsive. I was surprised that such an expensive car didn't sound an alarm.

A detective asks for Marcella's insight on a case. The serial killer she never caught eleven years ago is apparently back. This and the recent divorce spurs Marcella to rejoin the police force and she's put on the case. Going straight to the serial killer team seems dubious at best.

Marcella still thinks her main suspect from way back is the likely culprit, but her superiors disagree. While he's on work release, he's monitored around the clock so he couldn't have done it... or could he? The show relies far too often on Marcella being right and her superiors disagreeing, despite no supporting arguments from her.

The first episode wasn't bad but I wondered if we needed another dark cop show where the main character straddles both sides of the law. It felt like a budget Luther, and just didn't do enough to stand out. The convoluted story slowly unfolds. It's a great ride half way through, but the contrivances soon become too many. Marcella is spinning lies, and yet still on the case. It's great tension, but it also doesn't seem credible. Multiple times the show references that Marcella has multiple personal connections to the case, but she's allowed to continue the investigation.
That and I don't know if this is a special unit, but they only deal with this one case.

Not as many bodies as you'd expect from a serial killer.

Every episode introduces a new suspect that could be the serial killer. This is fun for only so long, because after the half way mark, the show feels like it's just tricking you or trying to pull the rug out from under you for laughs. There are numerous scenes that don't seem to relate, until a new clue is introduced later. This adds to the confusing story. You wonder why a character gets so much screen time when they don't seem important, but this isn't a detriment in of itself.

Episode four is strong, making you think Marcella has found the killer, before the revolving door of suspects begins in full force.

The biggest cheap shot the show pulls is that Marcella blacks out a few times during crucial plot points. What happens during the black outs are never explained and some of them are of paramount importance. Marcella never faces any recourse despite breaking the law multiple times and hindering the investigation to save herself. The show hints a few times that Marcella could be the killer.

This is a show that's made to be binged, but a binge-able show also needs to be aware of open questions. When everyone knows everyone and all of their actions effect each other, that gets tiring as the show progresses. It's too contrived. It begins to feel like things are being made up on the spot, which made me doubt the conclusion would be any good. There were just too many things to explain, and the show just ignores many of them.

Why is a construction company so important to this show?
It's contrived, but you have to keep watching to find out.

The show does a great job of dropping clues and causing you to continually change who you think did it.  It doesn't do as good of a job explaining why the clues don't work, instead just dropping one suspect for a new one. I had a lot of fun trying to figure it out. who did it, but I soon realized the show doesn't want me to figure it out. It presents a new and potentially viable suspect almost every episode.

I got tired of going to the brink and coming back. It's just too many episodes with too many twists. It feels like they had to pad it for more episodes. That's disappointing because the first five episodes are really good, but episode six is the tipping point where I began to lose faith in the show. The show was down hill from there.

It took me a minute to place Henry Gibson (Harry Lloyd), but he's Viserys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.