A waterside boat hut burned down in an arson attack; a pregnant 16-year-old in the hospital after throwing herself off a roof; a true-crime podcaster investigating the historic disappearance of a teenage girl; a copper having trouble sleeping and experiencing troubling visions. There’s a lot going on at the beginning of BBC One’s new four-part thriller The Jetty. At first, it feels like writer Cat Jones (Wolfe) has thrown a load of clichés at a wall in the hope that one will reel us in – but as the four episodes gain momentum, one grim picture of misogyny, sexual exploitation and murder emerges.
Jenna Coleman plays Detective Ember Manning, well-liked (if not respected by all – sexism is rife) in the lakeside Lancashire town where she grew up and now works. The series begins when she is called to investigate the aforementioned arson on a building which just so happened to have once been owned by her late husband. But that fire ends up being one of the least interesting crimes Ember is faced with. A pregnant teenager landing on her car bonnet after throwing herself from a roof is much more gripping for a weeknight drama, I’m sure you’ll agree.
As Ember, flanked by her police partner Hitch (Archie Renaux) delves into the mystery of who the father of barely-16-year-old Miranda’s baby might be, she begins to uncover the town’s web of sordid secrets. I’m avoiding details deliberately – the twists and shocks in The Jetty come at a rapid pace, giving the series a propulsion that justifies its release as a box set on iPlayer (a trend I usually despise, but not this time).
Those secrets are linked to the strange disappearance of a teenager Amy Knightly, who went missing without a trace decades earlier. The Jetty cuts between Ember’s investigations and scenes of Amy (brilliantly played as a rebellious brat by Renegade Nell’s Bo Bragason) bullying her new unassuming friend Caitlin (the equally excellent Laura Marcus) into a new life of playing truant, underage drinking and – crucially – hanging out with much older boys. No, men.
The ever-reliable Jenna Coleman is the glue that holds the series together, but it’s these flashes into the past where the drama really comes to life. As we watch Amy and Caitlin get deeper and deeper into a grown-up world of sleaze and booze, the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place.
Their past soon catches up to Ember too – a true-crime podcaster, Riz (Bafta-nominated Weruche Opia), has her suspicions that Ember’s now-dead husband, Mac, had something to do with Amy’s disappearance. Soon, the detective is having to analyse her own past relationship: was it simply by chance that she was only 17 years old when she became pregnant with their daughter? Or did the “fully grown man” Mac have more sinister motives for pursuing her as a young girl?
The Jetty is heavy-handed. Its theme – of rampant misogyny leading to outright violence against women and girls – is a bit of a frying pan to the head rather than a creeping realisation. The jumps between the past and present can be jarring (for a while I didn’t even realise the scenes with Amy and Caitlin had gone back in time). But all of that is easily forgotten when the story itself is so compulsive.
Amid the tennis and the football and Glastonbury taking up the schedules recently, TV has been crying out for a series like The Jetty – one the entire nation can really get stuck into and chat about at work the next day. I can’t remember the last time a BBC crime series gripped me this much.
‘The Jetty’ starts tonight at 9pm on BBC One. The full series is streaming on BBC iPlayer now.