3 out of 5

Created by: Abi Morgan

covers season 1

Damn you, story, you keep getting in the way of my rich character drama!

River is one of a bajillion series I’d tried and discarded based on my rigorous (-ly random) criteria: most “hook” shows get the bin, and a detective tale in which the lead, John River (Stellan Skarsgård), gets his bearings by chatting up his visions of dead people, fit the bill.  My thinking generally goes that shows hang by their hook to keep you hooked, and then end up forgetting to add enough content besides that.  This bears out often enough to trust it, and River’s BBC dry approach to its subject matter – the slow lead-in that leaves us in silence for half an episode before hinting at a direction – was enough of an addition to convince me to spend my TV time elsewhere.

Later, Netflix-ease and good reviews gave me the patience to revisit it.  And yes, River, in some ways, kicks my judgment in its nards: creator / writer Abi Morgan’s oblique approach to John’s mental state as a condition he lives with, as opposed to an always helpful deus ex machina, and Skarsgård’s unbelievably strong performance – with excellent support from Lesley Manville, Georgina Rich, and Adeel Akhtar – pushes the six-part series into some stunningly compelling studies of living with dementia; of being a competent person besides the fact, and just wanting to be left to live as normally as possible while doing something – in this case, detecting – you’re good at.  It’s sad, it’s fascinating, and it Stellan’s / Abi’s representation of John’s split with reality is fascinating as hell.

But wait, there’s more!  …And that ends up being the rub.  The hook hooks the other way this time, in that there’s a mystery we’re supposed to be dealing with – the murder of John’s partner, Stevie (Nicola Walker) – and while this takes up an interesting place in the dynamic, initially, with Stevie an obvious candidate for dead-talking and John told it’s essentially a closed case, when his wiles get the case re-opened, it starts swirling with a bit too much of the he-did-it, now she-did-it-and-he-did-something-worse last minute reveals that are the bread and butter of this stuff, which is to say that it’s fairly generic.  And while those deus ex machinas might not be ghost-provided, they certainly occur with regular frequency: snippets of conversation that have John re-examining a tape or document or whatever.  The case isn’t uninteresting, but as an unofficial investigation, it combined well with the psychological study; once more eyes are on it, it feels like a distraction from the more interesting stuff, and indeed, that stuff becomes wound into proceedings less effectively, including what feels like a puzzling inclusion of Eddie Marsan as Thomas Neill Cream’s apparition, inspired by a book John is reading.  Like, I can always use more Eddie Marsan in my shows, but that’s the only reason this seemed necessary, beyond having an antagonistic ghost in the mix.

River will have me giving some more patience to “hook” shows, perhaps, especially when such a stellar cast is carrying things, but due to a muddled mix with the show’s less compelling elements, it still ends up being an overall average experience.