Things can grow here

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2024

#14 :  Sherwood

Contrary to some corners of social media’s aspersions, James Graham’s BBC drama Sherwood is not a gender-bending contemporary take on Robin Hood (though we’d quite happily watch that show too!) Rather, it’s a compulsive, intricately plotted, and incredibly timely Northern yarn inspired by the brutal July 2004 murders of trade unionist Keith Frogson and hairdresser Chanel Taylor in the pit mining village of Annesley Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire. Every bit as dark, destructive, and yet wholly in thrall to the dramatic potential and dirt-beneath-the-nails reality of domestic life as, say, Happy Valley, the first season of Graham’s show was a masterclass in complex characterwork and world-building that shone a light on long-festering community tensions arising from the 80s’ mining strikes through the prism of an unspeakable atrocity. Its second season, boasting a fistful of episodes helmed by the brilliant Clio Barnard, builds on the first’s foundations, going darker and digging deeper into the lives of its core characters while, with the introduction of Monica Dolan’s conniving Ann Brennan, raising the stakes without compromising the show’s true grit. If you want British telly at its arse-clenching, watch-through-your-fingers best, then look no further.

I watched the first season of this and really enjoyed it, but (for reasons we'll get in to), I took a long time to getting round to watching it. But I've finally managed it - well done me.

One of the reasons that I took so long to get into it is that the first half of the first episode is really dull - yes, I know they have to set the scene, but it really feels like they're just setting things up to be very dull indeed. Fortunately, someone does then gets murdered - so that livens things up a bit (although not as much as you might think).

But then, the second episode happens! Wow. It's tense and unexpected - and you're right back in the action. It sets it up that bad things are going to happen, but you think they'll work out OK - but let's just say they really don't work out OK. The tension does somewhat reduce after that episode, but things still stay pretty taut - and I know it sounds like a horrible thing to say but it really does have some most excellent murders scattered through the series. 

It's just all a bit weird that the beginning of the first episode is so dull because it all feels completely unnecessary and could well have scared people off from something that's, as a whole, very much not in that vein. You don't really need to know any details about the plot - it's densely and twistily plotted and populated with devious and unpleasant characters, but you do need to watch season 1 first because some of the plot details and central characters carry over into this season.

But there are some new characters and that was another reason I took some time to get into it - I'd heard that Monica Dolan's character was really very nasty indeed and I'm not a fan of very nasty characters, so I wasn't sure my nerves were up to it. And boy is she very nasty indeed - it's a really well written character and she inhabits it. She doesn't appear all that often but when she does the tension heightens and you just know something VERY BAD is going to happen.

Also obviously good are David Morrissey (in a very David Morrissey-ish kind of role) and Lorraine Ashbourne (in a very Lorraine Ashbourne-ish kind of role - this is the fourth thing we've seen her in) - other less well known names that also stood out for me are Michael Balogun, Oliver Huntingdon, Ria Zmitrowicz and Bethany Asher, a actor with Downs Syndrome in her first major role. It's also got some pretty decent actors in minor roles - David Harewood, Stephen Dillane, Lesley Manville and Robert Lindsey all pop up infrequently. The whole thing is very actor-y with lots of two headers set up to give them a chance to show off - but they do it so well, I'll forgive them.

It's also (obviously) very well shot with a general sense of foreboding and lots of nods to the industrial past of the area - Empire calls out Happy Valley as a similar experience and it's a good shout whereby "normal" lives turn out to be anything but normal (and that's another one you really need to start at the beginning). Once I'd got over my initial inertia, I raced through this and really enjoyed it - it's certainly not a barrel of laughs, but it's well written, acted and directed and certainly worth a look if you've not caught up with it yet.

#13 - It looks good, but makes no sense at all
#15 - I just didn't enjoy it