Season 1: 2 out of 5

Season 2: 3 out of 5

Created by: Pete McTighe

Review written for season 1; updated at end for season 2

I watched the first episode of “we did a bad thing and now let’s all agree to hide it” mystery drama The Pact when it initially aired, and though hoping for more Laura Fraser goodness post-Breaking Bad, the lack of logic it took to get to its Bad Thing suggested the show might be something of a trudge, so I took a pass. However, the announcement of a second season intrigued me, as did the decision to go the anthology route with it – the modern TV way of pummeling an idea into the ground, or strengthening it. Either way, I’m always curious when something that doesn’t look too great to me merits further seasons (when I can’t understand the appeal – obviously there’s stuff that’s just not my genre but I get why it’s popular), and the anthology decision meant I could still look forward to a conclusion at the end of the first season. So: why not, let’s give it a go.

And, yeah, while it’s still clunky as heck, never quite recovering from its initial logic leaps, The Pact proves itself to be fairly solid for a few episodes, with all of the leads bringing a lot of humanity to their archetypal “the wild one,” and “the strict one” and etcetera roles in their friend group, and the plot wrinkles appropriately upping the tension. It’s like, if you can swallow the first main gaffe, the stuff that follows is pretty good.

…Until the show utterly crashes and burns in its last couple episodes of the season, the aftertaste of that initial gaffe coming back up and stinking up the joint, undoing the character work and requiring too long of a suspension of disbelief before it can get to doing final reveals, and making more sense of everything.

Anna (Fraser) and her gal pals work at the local brewery, where Jack (Aneurin Barnard) has become the new boss, and is pretty much universally loathed, displaying a callousness – an open sexism and favoritism – that wasn’t as common when his father, Arwel (Eddie Marsan) was in charge. When Anna applies for a supervisor role and is pretty much shot down without any consideration, she and her pack – all with their grievances – end up conspiring during a workplace party to have some revenge, ideally embarrassing Jack with a prank.

The believability factor of this “prank,” and how it’s committed, are the first main hit (besides Jack being written as a mustache twirling, over-the-top, villainous ponce, but okay, TV, you do you), as you’re cringing at how obviously the show is setting up all of these ladies to look guilty when Jack is later discovered – post-prank – quite dead. The second hit is dealing with the justifications they make for not reporting their involvement, but this is all essentially set up. Choke that down and you’re on your way: the group mostly sticks together in a fashion that’s uncommon for these setups, continually supporting each other when other events in their lives make keeping the main lie afloat that much more difficult. These subplots are part of the eventual crumbling of the season – they prove to be almost wholly extraneous, or in one case, forced in just so we have something to look back to and nod at as “clues” – but during the midsection of the run, they’re presented well, and provide the actors (Fraser, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Eiry Thomas, and Heledd Gwynn) with good fodder for iterating on their characters, and making them compelling on their own.

As the police investigation and other factors make the ladies’ involvement with Jack more and more tense, the show is able to trigger some binge-watching beats.

But, as mentioned, it can’t sustain this. There’s a point where the show essentially wholly repeats a plot device, and the characters’ reactions to it feel especially rote, given its recycling. This is the first sign of the show doing cleanup, dropping all of its subplotting and character work so it can start moving towards a conclusion, and then it just starts to be one frustrating event after another, dynamics shifting just to create drama and not because they contextually make sense, and there was a point where the show started to feel very, very white and privileged (not directly, just, like, these ladies are able to indulge in their issues in a way a person of color might not even have the option to)… but I digress.

It’s a large fall from what had temporarily puffed itself up to worthwhile TV, though perhaps I should’ve gone with my first impressions.

Update post-season 2:

It’s, to me, either ironic or telling that, given my note on the last season being pretty white, season 2 focused on a family of color… and also recast season 1’s Rakie Ayola from a side character to the lead, in a different role / character.

That said, race only very, very, very indirectly enters the picture here, which is fine. It doesn’t always have to be the focus, but awareness of it in how a story is told is appreciated. So whether or not season 1’s “whiteness” is being responded to here only in terms of casting but not storytelling – I can’t say. There are subtle things I could try to pull out, but I feel like it would be a stretch, and I’m also not really qualified to comment on any of this beyond the kneejerk reaction I’ve already expressed.

Anyhow, this aside, it’s quite astounding how much season 2 improves upon every failing of season 1, though in truth, this could probably be a standalone series, only using ‘The Pact’ name to get eyes on it. Which, again, is also fine, and is part of the anthology game. But we’re more loosely going at the concept here, as “all of us agree to lie” is a pretty general staple of these types of setups, and season 2 waits to implement that ‘pact’ until we’re several episodes in.

Structure-wise, though, that is the main correction, as it gives us time to understand the stakes and characters, as the Rees family is met with the sudden appearance of Connor (Jordan Wilks), a lookalike of their recently deceased brother, and who is claiming to be a relation. With an absent father, the Reeses only have the word of their mother (Ayola) telling them that Connor is absolutely not related, no-how, and she’s willing to go to quite destructive lengths to prove that. Her controlling nature is thus fleshed out by this Broadchurchy one-discovery-to-ruin-them-all plot point, with the passive Jamie (Aaron Anthony), peacemaker Megan (Mali Ann Rees), and hot-tempered Will (Lloyd Everitt) all falling on different levels of belief of their mother, and of Connor.

What does carry over from season 1 is the inner life of these characters being strong, such that they seem like real people, very much supported by Tighe’s script and the actors; the difference is that most of their subplots end up being important to the main story, thematically and directly, so that these things feel necessary, and not like window dressing. What also carries over, though, is how the side characters’ subplots are not important, to the point of being complete nonstarters; and whether that’s world-building – some drama just turns out to be noise, and not an upheaval – or sloppy writing / editing… given season 1, I’m less favorably inclined towards in deciding. But still, this is a much more tolerable balancing.

However, even at six episodes, we do some wheel-spinning, as the show does its best to extend its main mystery – why is Ayola’s character so intent on keeping Connor away from her family? – as far as possible through one of the most lazy methods, of having her (or others) react to things they see offscreen, and not explain those things until a few episodes later. This can work as isolated, and a temporary, delaying tactic for tension, but to make it your main way of hiding relevant info just feels like narrational cut and paste. And while the final explanation(s) has/have some emotional weight be prepared for a lot of Why? and How? unresolveds; the ending only really clicks when we pass the twist reveals and deal with the characters, suggesting the show would overall have been better off as a drama and not forced into a mystery structure.