Blackshore

An Irish-set police procedural in six episodes. This has many of the usual tropes: detective under something of a cloud returns to her hometown to keep her out of the way, just as a hotel manager is found murdered. It is a small town so everyone is linked somehow and our detective, Fia, herself has a traumatic history with the events of 20 years ago when a girl disappeared and her father took his own life and that of his wife and son, leaving Fia to be raised by her Uncle Donal, a police officer.

There’s a lot packed into those six episodes as Fia unravels a nest of obligations and cover ups that link all the way back to her own past. There’s some nice misdirection with her initial mistrust of her sergeant and a clumsily drawn and rather hurried love interest but her comeback to him in the bar is nicely done.

I didn’t see the twists coming so it did hold my interest for all six episodes and there was a nice halfway point at the end of episode four when it seemed everything was resolved but Fia pulled at a loose end with shocking results.

I usually like my detective shows to have neatly wrapped endings but this didn’t happen here and was better for it. Fia did NOT get the girl (local love interest) who did stand up for herself after Fia mistreated her, and the final outcome of the chase was still up for grabs – not as a blatant set up for a second series but as an acknowledgement that life, crime and policing are all apt to be messy.