TV Review- Sweetpea

 

Billed as a dark comedy drama, Sweetpea certainly delivers on the former though not so much the latter. It is essentially about three women who for different reasons are frustrated at not being seen for who they are. Rhiannon is a quiet character who is ignored, taken for granted and generally not given her due. Julia is a successful estate agent hiding her abusive relationship under a glamorous confidence. Marina is a junior police officer who works hard but whose conclusions are routinely ignored by her boss. All three come into each other’s orbit when the local community is shocked by two savage murders. Only we, the viewers, know that Rhiannon is the killer – the tension of the series is whether or how this is discovered.

To buy into the premise takes some suspension of disbelief. Maybe its supposed ot be funny but during the first episode we follow Rhiannon through such a series of  incidents whose similarity and proximity just seem unbelievable. Rhiannon works at the local newspaper and is a wallflower whose luck seems to be endlessly bad. People ignore her, throw their coats over her (does anyone in real life do this?), bump into her and so forth. This should be funny but it feels unlikely. Matters worsen when her father dies and who should show up for the funeral but the bullies who made her teenage life a torture led by Julia and the dynamic has not changed. Then Rhiannon’s dog dies. It rains. Her sister wants to sell the house in which she lives. You get the picture. This is seemingly the reason she starts killing. I suppose there are plenty of bitter people who become killers but I found it hard to accept this whole story. What kept me viewing though was that I remember having similar thoughts about the first episode of Wreck and that turned out to be terrific and compelling. Sweetpea doesn’t quite reach those heights but it does get considerably better when we get past the introductions and into the meat of things and has a visceral edge.

Its an unsettling series in some ways because whereas we are used to rooting for a central character, here you’re not so sure. Rhiannon’s victims are seemingly terrible people but her myopic view of them excludes what most of us would do and just avoid them. Its difficult to credit that a character presented as so intelligent and clearly with a feistiness just below the surface has never really matured from the school playground. The world still revolves around her even if it’s a world that has let her down and disappointed. Yet Ella Purnell pulls out a portrayal so compelling and involved that you find yourself sometimes hoping she won’t be caught which is bad if you think about it.

The rest of the cast are equally good. As school bully turned estate agent Julia , Nicole Lecky successfully navigates the character’s journey in what turns out to be an unusual storyline. Played by Calam Lynch,  AJ's open amiable personality is the opposite of Rhiannon’s and he is the only person who sees Rhiannon without prejudice. Jon Pointing adds a subtle quality to the seemingly laddish Craig and the most laughs come courtesy of the Gazette’s editor Norman (Jeremy Swift) who, similarly to the office décor, seems to come from the Seventies. This is a weird aspect actually; though texting and a USB play a major part in the storyline, the office seems like its from another era. When Rhiannon and AJ visit people as reporters they take paper and pen.

As the series progresses it continues to evolve into something more than just a murder a week. When Rhiannon’s attempt to kill Julia – who she ultimately blames for everything- goes awry and unexpected bond develops between captor and prisoner exposing the truth about Julia’s supposedly perfect life which Rhiannon both envies and hates so much. Her fiancé is revealed as a bully more serious than the school days taunting that haunts Rhiannon and a new plan is forged. This comes to a head in episode five. Paralleling this we also follow junior police officer Marina, whose dogged investigative work essentially puts Rhiannon in the frame. If anything she is the heroine of the series whose over eager attempts mean she cannot make it stick. Leah Harvey plays this role with such determination it adds another layer of tension because we know she’s right.

If episode five proves the least predictable- part four having ended with a strange series of events that I was wondering just how they would explain, the final episode keeps us waiting to see whether Rhiannon really is a changed person and if Julia will end up telling the truth. The final few minutes, clearly set up for a second series, suggest that Rhiannon’s `life 2.0` isn’t really going to happen leaving her with a scenario that its hard to say how she can wrangle put of. As is the case all the way through, the question is whether we want her to get away with it. Does the end justify the means? While throughout the series sets her up as a vigilante yet what happens at the end changes that ; she is now doing anything to keep herself at liberty.

Overall, I did find Sweetpea absorbing and quite tense, all done with minimal tricks allowing the strong cast to carry the weight accompanied by some simmering incidental music and the occasional flashy shot. Apparently the series is somewhat altered from the source novel by CJ Skuse, to make the main character more understandable. In the books (yes there’s five so far) she is seemingly a full on vigilante serial killer seeking out victims rather than the coincidental encounters and bad memories of school days that drive her in the series. Still after a slow start the series does have plenty of blood and some guts but is largely missing the dark humour.