The following article contains minor spoilers for ‘Under Salt Marsh’ episode one and two.
The fictional Welsh town of Morfa Halen is slick and boggy. If it rains too much – and it will rain too much, it’s Wales – the tides could surge, and the town could end up underwater. Low, dark clouds dip and swell across the glowering landscape, while painted stone houses lie in wait. You get the sense that nature might swallow the place whole; gorge on it, licking its lips. And this is the environment in which a death occurs – a young boy, Cefin, is found drowned in a drainage ditch by local primary school teacher and former detective, Jackie (Kelly Reilly). The fresh water in his lungs doesn’t match that of his briny surroundings. It looks likely that it could be a murder. The only question, as ever, is: whodunnit?
It’s hard to find a genuinely compelling British crime drama these days. Netflix is crammed with throwaway Harlan Coben offerings, usually with names like The Stranger and Fool Me Once, and Richard Armitage as someone’s slightly hapless but potentially sinister husband. ITV detective shows are a dime-a-dozen, most often with two detectives looking pensive beside a cliff face as the lead image. The problem is that plenty of higher-calibre dramas look similar, on first glance. There’s the atmospheric British landscape. The brooding, overworked police. But Under Salt Marsh, which also stars Industry’s Harry Lawtey and Shaun Of The Dead’s Rafe Spall is one such drama that’s worth paying attention to. It’s one of the more gripping thrillers I’ve seen in years.
Creator Claire Oakley unfolds the plot with care and patience, which requires the same from the viewer. This is not an adrenaline ride, but rather a well-crafted, pacy thriller that’ll have you forgetting to check your phone in the process. The characters feel fleshed out, flawed and complicated. Jackie, we learn, lost a niece a year earlier in eerily similar circumstances, and had to leave the police force due to reasons that remain unclear in the first two episodes available. Still, she is unable to shake her detective’s instinct, and spends a lot of time marching around the marshy land in a huge parka, asking questions and behaving in slightly erratic ways.
Existing alongside the boy’s murder is an environment that feels both uneasy and claustrophobic. The local pub landlady’s dishevelled and unwell son, Osion (Julian Lewis Jones), remains steadfast in his belief that the town is being poisoned. We learn that there are inhabitants, on nearby “Spider Island”, who live “in unison with the Earth”, the brackish water increasingly puddling at their feet. As with any good crime thriller, the setting is as much a character as the townspeople themselves, with the impending arrival of a town-swallowing storm giving proceedings a sense of horrible, delicious foreboding.
With six episodes spread over the course of February (they’re released weekly), there is plenty still to get stuck into. Will Jackie uncloak the killer? Is the same person responsible for the fate of her missing niece? Are Osion’s conspiracies somehow not as unhinged as they sound? And, most importantly, will any of this unfurl before the town becomes engulfed in the swamp of mother nature? For the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to finding out.
