3 out of 5

Created by: Arne Nolting, Jan Martin Scharf, Philipp G. Steffens

About midway through Germany’s TNT’s series The Valley, you’ll have picked up on the scattered, eyebrow-raising nods that give you a pretty clear indication as to where the show is going.  Still, suspecting that – and having it confirmed as the minutes tick by – the show maintains our attentions by not really pushing the mystery angle too much, and so when the curtain is finally pulled aside to reveal what you’d already assumed, it’s not dispiriting; there are other reasons to watch.  Now, that might’ve been by accident, as for all likely intents and purposes, The Valley’s is a mystery, about an amnesiac man in a small town who “sees” a murder, and then the victim shows up in town later …and is then murdered, as the man saw it (and pesky visions these are – he did not see the murderer), and any attempt to summarize any particular episode will revolve around that mystery.  However, as befitting the sleepy town in which it takes place, the show seems to casually tip-toe around the whole affair, as well as the lead’s amnesia, and the other various oddities that seem way out of place in a 2015-era show from any country.  The show has been compared to Twin Peaks, but it’s also not copping Lynch’s trademark insouciant insanity; it’s just bumping into things, including visions of ghosts, and affairs, and blood baths, and doped teens, and so on.  So maybe the un-American un-need to beat us over the head with Lost-style hype was a fortunate accident, but regardless, it’s absolutely because of this – and because it doesn’t try to force any overt Style onto us – that it can be forgiven of its many flaws, and enjoyed as a slowburn thriller.

Now, the Twin Peaks comparison is apt, but for interesting, mostly superfluous plot points; we’ll consider this purposeful, that the show wanted to make tributes to an influence, but also did itself, us, and Lynch the respect of not trying on the “weird” suit that we often consider Lynchian.  Dead girl who’s the prize of the town except everyone knew she wasn’t: check.  Affairs every which way: check.  Shady business deals with blackmail: check.  Old, mystic lady: check.  Josie – Twin Peak’s foreigner – is maybe supplanted by the town’s Asian priest, who uses a translation app to stumble through confession.  There’s even a trailer in the woods in which nefarious things take place.  And yet, hardly any of these things matter, especially not in the way that Peaks laced every interaction with the same surface veneer of kook and undercurrent of darkness.  Rather, in The Valley, the details feel half-recollected.  Again, if not for the entirety of the series being presented in this manner, it might be frustrating, but the show nails its pacing to rather densely pack things in without, on the one hand, anything really happening, but never feeling like a time-waster because of it.

And I should offer: even once the shoe drops, another, unexpected shoe drops with it, and much of the above could be explained away… though I think that’d be rather too convenient.

There are certainly other shows to prioritize over The Valley; shows that are unassailably good, or don’t feel so matter-of-happenstance in their presentation.  But that also means that The Valley had its own feel, and it wasn’t difficult to make it through the series over a couple of days, even with other TV calling to me.