In her 17th-century painting Judith Slaying Holofernes , Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi depicted a famous scene of biblical vengeance: Judith decapitating the Assyrian general, Holofernes. Since its composition, the painting has been read as a proxy for Gentileschi’s own experience – Gentileschi was raped by her mentor, Agostino Tassi – and, by extension, has become a symbol of women taking control of their stories, after male-perpetrated violence. So when it appears before the eyes of a sceptical detective in Cat Jones’s new BBC thriller, The Jetty , we know we are in for a story of contested and reclaimed narratives.
In a sleepy Lancashire town where everyone knows everyone – and half of them are related – a blaze at the boathouse sets in motion a chain of events that will lead DC Ember Manning (Jenna Coleman) back into her own past. Sifting through the ashes, alongside Ember, is a podcaster, Riz Samuel (Weruche Opia), who has shown up to investigate a cold case. A girl, Amy (Bo Bragason), disappeared decades ago, and her body has never been found. What links the inferno on the jetty and this missing girl? And is this ancient history related to a string of present-day sex offences?
It is a familiar blend. Police procedural intertwines with flashback, allowing viewers into the story of Amy and her friend Caitlin (Laura Marcus), unfolding in the 1990s, while Ember and Riz sleuth in the here and now. Ember, whose deceased ex-husband (played by House of the Dragon ’s Tom Glynn-Carney) is implicated in these long-ago events, is a talented but impudent copper, far overqualified for her rank of detective constable. “I’m a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in inexpensive office wear,” she tells her gormless sidekick, Hitch (Archie Renaux). Raising a teenage daughter, while working on the beat, hasn’t given Ember much time for introspection about her relationship, but the power dynamics unveiled in Amy’s case force her to confront questions about her own life.
Coleman – most familiar to viewers for her stint as a Doctor Who assistant – is an excellent anchor for proceedings, imbuing Ember with a believable charisma. “I can detect my own a***holes,” she announces, proudly. And this is a world full of them; a world where male crimes against women surface like ripples on the lake. If The Jetty has a preoccupation, it is with the endemic nature of abuse. Ember describes the search for sex offenders in the town – men who have possibly raped and impregnated a minor – as like searching “for a needle in a pile of needles”. In this environment of consistent violation, how do you find the person who goes that step further and becomes a killer?
“I don’t believe that every man is capable of hurting a woman,” Ember tells a group of schoolgirls, “but we are living in an incubator for the ones that are.” It is a clear, feminist throughline – the sort of didactic commentary that is often absent from crime (and true crime) depictions of violence against women. That results, of course, in an element of cakeism , where the show falls foul of the very things it critiques. While Ember is on a crusade to unveil the systemic misogyny of the community, the flashbacks depict these teenage girls in an overtly sexualised way. The balance between the message and the method is fraught with complications.
All the same, there is far more good stuff in The Jetty than in your average “defective detective” drama (and yes, Ember has all the hallmarks of that trope: dead spouse, disruptive daughter, difficulties with authority). Unlike so many recent cop dramas, the mystery elements are clear; the cast of characters relatively contained. If the denouement doesn’t break any new creative ground, at least it resists the temptation towards the sort of cheap twists that are so prevalent in mixed timeline narratives. And if the writing sometimes clunks off the screen (“This place is like the A to Z of misogyny,” Riz declares, “and V is for victim-blaming”) then at least Coleman is a reassuringly watchable presence.
The Jetty doesn’t reinvent the crime drama. In fact, it borrows widely from the BBC’s vast back catalogue. But the restrained and self-contained nature of the narrative, and its likeable protagonist, offsets most of that triteness. The result is a compulsive mystery that wears its politics confidently and opaquely. It might not have the artistic merit to hang in the Uffizi, but, in the pantheon of cold-case dramas, it deserves its place on the wall.
‘The Jetty’ is on BBC One and iPlayer
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