2 out of 5

Written By: Debbie O’Malley

Right, so, maybe because I’m fairly newish to TV (in the sense that I’ve only returned to watching shows after a good ten year abstinence) and just haven’t seen otherwise, but there seems to be quite the proliferation of short, moody, mystery mini-series floating out of UK TV.  Now surfing back through the records, I know and see that mysteries and detectives are nothing new there, with serialized popular shows stretching back several decades, and the UK TV season has forever been notably shorter than the US one, leading, one could surmise, to ‘smarter’ writing as a need to be more compact (a trend that’s finally catching up as US shows shrink to 13 episodes with mid-season breaks), but noting all that, there is a particular brew that’s I still think is particular to the recent past, and I’ve watched quite a few examples – Broadchurch and What Remains the ones most immediately coming to mind.  ‘The Guilty’ certainly follows the trend, and even keeps closer in step with Broadchurch as it also focuses on solving the who, what, and why of a dead child.  The format gets a bit of a tweak, as the detective investigating had been initially assigned to the case some time back when the child had gone missing, before going on maternity leave and the task being left to her partner… who quickly rounded up some suspects and pointed a finger, though the child remained unfound at the time.  Suspect kills himself, it’s believed the department had their man, and the parents hold out hope that one day their child will return.  Until, dang, that body is discovered… right in their neighborhood.  So ‘The Guilty’ jumps back and forth in time from the previous investigation to the current one, showing us, by comparison, mistakes that were made and laying out (or so the writers thought, I’m guessing) the ‘clues’ that could lead us to some answers.

Except it’s all for fucking naught.  My negativity isn’t about the final reveal – unnecessary last minute twists are part of this genre, and once you get to the last ten minutes of the final episode, whatever final curtain they drop is almost always ridiculously patterned but you just go with it anyway ’cause what choice do you have – but ‘Guilty’ is (blech) guilty of simply not giving us a rewarding viewing.  The trend that the show is part of is one that uses its central mystery to explore the lives of its characters.  ‘Broadchurch’ followed the US’s season 1 and 2 of ‘The Killing’ in stepping through all the tendrils of a community affected by one death; ‘What Remains’ did a reverse study of how the facades we present to our neighbors can cause (or allow) some heinous, unintended things.  In both cases, we also got to know the detectives investigating, and their involvement and personalities were crucial for how the viewer could be drawn into events.  Whether or not you were satisfied with the mystery’s conclusion, you were, ideally, involved with the characters, and both shows were successful on those grounds.

But Guilty doesn’t do that.  It’s slimmer than those other shows at only 3 episodes, but that should still be enough to give us room to side with our lead inspector, and it just doesn’t happen.  Nor do the rest of the various character interactions, or the ‘reveals’ regarding their secrets.  Rather, the fractured time structure just seems like a piss poor attempt at drumming up drama, withholding information for no real reason except that it’s TV, so we can do that.  The acting is good, and the show looks good, and the dialogue is well written, I just think they missed the point – we don’t think about the characters because we’re told A – Z who they are and how they feel, and we don’t get to care about the mystery because it’s over and done.  The show tries to shift interest toward the latter, but then sets the tone toward the former, making it pretty dissatisfying overall, and that 11th hour twist seem pretty empty.