'The Gulf' Episode 1 Review: A broken detective investigates a case she thought she had solved 5 years ago
'The Gulf' Episode 1 that premiered in the US on December 5, lays the groundwork for a good crime drama.
It has the winning combination of elements — the sleepy village/town, the lead detective from the city who is dealing with some personal crisis as she tries to solve the crime, the close-knit community of locals who have some history with the detective, hidden secrets and revelations that recast relationships in a new light, and an intriguing central mystery that keeps the motor of the narrative urgency humming away in the background .
It is a formula that has worked for countless TV series, from the British 'Broadchurch' (adapted for US television as 'Gracepoint') to 'Shetland' and 'Justified', so why deviate from it really.
However, while the six-part limited TV series sticks close to the grounding tropes of its genre, it throws up enough surprises and reveals to hook the viewer.
The episode begins with a horrific car cash involving the main protagonist detective Jess Savage (Kate Elliott) and her husband, Alex. When the car hits the water, we see Jess fighting to get to the surface.
The scene then shifts to someone making their way through a forested area — we think its Jess — but it turns out to be a small boy who stands in the middle of the road, caught in the headlights of a bus that trundles to a stop before him.
Jess is visited in the hospital by her junior Justin Harding (Ido Drent) who tells her that one of her old cases has come roaring back to life. A small boy Nathan Baum (Niko Clare), presumed dead in an investigation led by her, had been found and the boy had handed the police her visiting card.
According to Harding, Nathan was kidnapped five years ago and had been kept in captivity all this time and had been sexually abused.
A heavily-injured Jess (who has just got out of a coma) is in no shape to get out of the hospital bed, woozy with pain medication and grieving for Alex who had died in the crash. Yet, when the case comes, she lobbies for it, saying she has to rectify what she messed up in her initial investigation.
We never understand why she wants to follow up on the case in her fragile condition but we assume she is following the old age of "keeping busy" to keep grief at bay. She asks for the case files but is surprised to hear that she had ordered them up to her office on Friday, the day before the car crash, for review.
Jess has no memory of doing so and is missing time. In the meantime, a mysterious man tears up and burns Nathan's clothes and gives the last remaining fabric piece it to his dogs to sniff and find him — he is obviously Nathan's captor. We see another girl, also held captive, who watches this man from a window.
Nathan's parents are reunited with their child but their reactions differ. Simon, Nathan's father, who has remarried since Nathan's disappearance, is glad to see him. However, he seems to know more about his son's disappearance than he lets on and is terrified of the police talking to his son.
Nathan's mom, Chloe (Jodie Hillock), on the other hand, is heartbroken that her son refuses to let her touch him or talk to anyone. All he does is draw crosshatch drawings, one of which has the word "Lucy" written on it several times.
When Jess returns to the sleepy island town of Waiheke Island to investigate, she sees that her teenage daughter Ruby has left her place in disarray, partying with her boyfriend.
While Ruby seems to be the boilerplate version of every pouty, angsty teen on TV, she is sweet enough to keep a bottle of wine for her mom in the fridge. Jess drinks, pops pills and retraces her steps on the investigation.
She talks to her old boss, Doug Bennington (Jeffrey Thomas) to see if he remembers anything about the case. She goes looking for clues where Nathan's backpack was found five years ago and talks to the locals.
The fact that Nathan has been found is kept a secret and the reason given for their inquiries is that it is a "five-year review" before the case is closed.
The bus driver who drove the kids to the hiking spot keeps mum, possibly because he was also driving the bus that Nathan stumbled in front of — though why Jess and her partner Harding don't know this, is anyone's guess.
We also meet Billy, who has dogs — he is possibly the series big old red herring to keep us from guessing who the villain is too soon.
At the end of the episode, Jess has a flashback of a time she went to a bathroom and saw a teenage girl with cuts down her arms and remembers handing her a visiting card.
She looks at Nathan's drawing with the name "Lucy" and figures that the girl she met was probably the one who gave Nathan her card. It is a decent cliffhanger for the first episode.
So should you watch this one? It is competently made and Kate Elliot does a fair job of portraying the broken Jess Savage. There is the Kiwi accent that you need to get used to but it isn't too distracting.
But in the streaming world of prestige TV, do you have the time for another competently-made but not gripping crime drama? Are you game for another good but not great show? If you are a fan of the crime drama genre in itself, go ahead and tune in.
'The Gulf' airs on Wednesdays at 3 am EST on Sundance Now.