2 out of 5

Created by: Gregory Burke (adapted from the book by Hideo Yokoyama)

So I’m watching Six Four, and nodding along at its cop procedural tropes, and allowing myself to be acceptably distracted, which is a swappable phrase for “entertained.” We have a married couple of cops, Chris (Kevin McKidd) and Michelle (Vinette Robinson), whose marriage is on the rocks after the disappearance of their daughter, Olivia; we have Chris’ past dalliances bringing him into contact with a journalist, who drops mentions of conspiracy that go All The Way To The Top!, inclusive of Chris’ Chief Constable older brother (Andrew Whipp); that conspiracy piques Chris interest as it involves another missing girl, whose father (James Cosmo) is also backing up the conspiracy bits; and meanwhile Michelle is keeping some big ol’ secrets from Chris as she scurries off to London – No! Don’t follow me! – to track down some lead on Olivia; and then another girl goes missing, and also goes All The Way To the Top!, though this time it’s a toppier top – the daughter of a political candidate (Richard Coyle).

This is all delivered via dreary UK procedural stylings, where characters don’t say much except to overreact, and the skies are always gray, and most people are frowning.

But, as mentioned: I’m acceptably distracted. Six Four has a good grasp on rolling out plot details, including the drop of its title, which is the code name for some something or other which crosses over through these conspiracies and which everyone clams up about as soon as it’s mentioned – another trope, where everyone except the principal character seems to know about this super duper secret coverup thing – and despite its To The Tops, there’s a kind of ground-level vibe that keeps it somewhat involving: Chris’ detectiving is really pavement-beating stuff, putting clues together in a very linear, believable fashion, and Michelle – actually an ex-undercover cop – gets involved in some fisticuffs, but she’s not acrobatting all over the place – it looks like realistic police training. And the motivations of some of the core characters feel relatable, not super grandiose.

Unfortunately, these elements don’t combat how wholly constructed of tropes the show is, to the extent that following the story is not a matter of paying attention, but just kind of squinting and pointing at the next logical trope in the series. This doesn’t necessarily break that distraction, except there are some key points where Six Four drops its inevitable other shoe on some story point way early, dismantling any real intrigue, and instead of using that to try out some slight wrinkle on a trope (or double down on a twist), the show will instead walk back the story point. It’s almost embarrassing, like someone leaked a story detail early, and then the writers (Gregory Burke, Claire McQuillan) are just like, naaah, that’s not how it happened. …Only to admit 30 minutes later: well, okay, yeah, that’s how it happened. Furthermore, this structure invalidates a large chunk of the four episodes, something the show continues to struggle with: making many of the scenes feel like they matter.

McKidd is very solid; Robinson doesn’t quite get enough screentime to sell her part, but she’s good when she’s around, if you ignore the lack of context we’re given for her actions. And up to these storytelling gaffes, I was good with Six Four. We weren’t great pals, but sure, every now and then, not bad. But the buildup of averageness is overwhelmed by some very defeating storytelling choices as it goes on.