Annika

Unforgotten , it
ain’t.  But it’s still Nicola
Walker.  And even if we don’t have Sunny
and the rest of the Unforgotten crew,
we have a new team, up in the wilds of Glasgow .


Annika is
another police procedural, courtesy of the PBS Masterpiece channel (which,
along with Acorn, carries a bunch of good stuff).   It follows the Marine Homicide Unit – is
there, in fact, such a thing?   Not that
it matters, it makes for a good set-up.  
The episodes are self-contained, so unlike Unforgotten , or Shetland ,
there’s no story arc over the full season.  
Nor is Annika as dark as
either of the aforementioned.   It has a
lighter touch.   And it has a gimmick
where Nicola’s character breaks the fourth wall, and speaks directly to us,
sharing not so much her thoughts about the specific case in hand, but more her
textural observations, Ibsen or Sophocles, whatever pops into her floating
stream of consciousness.   I find this
device both charming and revealing, it has transparency; I can also see where
people could find it aggravating, fey and cutesy.  

The
show has grit, without being horrifically brutal or down in the mouth.   Glasgow
has the rap of being a pretty tough burg, but as shown here, it’s not all murk and
spit and shadows.   And people don’t seem
oppressed or bitter.   It doesn’t come
across like a province of the former Soviet Union .   The
other three cops on the squad are individuated enough to give them flavor and
specifics, without falling into the generic, or caricature, but it’s Annika
herself who has an inner life, and a domestic one.   She’s a single mom, with a teenage daughter,
and this is nowhere near as deadly as it might sound.   Their relationship is prickly, and feels
organic, and it’s interesting from the outside.  
Both actresses feed into a natural dynamic, adversarial and anything but
treacly.   Part of what makes it work is
that our hero, while very perceptive and on-game as a cop, is a lot less
skillful as a mom.   She has a hard time
navigating the shoals.  

The
mysteries are better than serviceable, although not terribly mystifying; the
cop shop stuff is convincing; the cops
are really good, you get to like them, the cast wins you over.   Mind you, they can be rather dour ( dure , the Scots would say), and the
humor – of which there’s a fair amount – is delivered very deadpan.   You can turn on the subtitles, too, but if
you’ve gotten used to the accents in Shetland ,
it shouldn’t pose a problem here.

You
kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.
The first season in, I think this one’s a keeper.