Folk-horror movie touchstone The Wicker Man celebrated its fiftieth birthday final yr, presumably by not blowing out a candle with a tiny human sacrifice trapped inside. Alibi’s wickedly playful island psychodrama The Pink King seems like a belated a part of the anniversary revels. It pays the final word Wicker Man tribute by harvesting the premise wholesale.
Once more, we’ve an uptight copper gatecrashing a distant isle the place the outdated methods nonetheless maintain sway. There are locals parading in creepy rustic masks, a self-possessed aristocrat lording over every little thing and, crucially, a lacking baby nobody appears that fussed about discovering.
The Pink King applies entertaining topspin to the road-tested premise, including but extra rug-pulls and buckets of sarcasm and self-reflexiveness. In actual fact, the characters are so self-aware it feels bizarre nobody says: “All this pagan stuff? Jogs my memory of that outdated horror film with Edward Woodward. And possibly a little bit of Scorching Fuzz.”
Within the Woodward function of by-the-book sergeant is Anjli Mohindra, already an outdated hand at remaining on process in fantastical conditions after two seasons of time-loop thriller The Lazarus Challenge. Once we meet Mohindra’s confused Grace, she is being ostracised in her Newcastle cop store for whistleblowing. The abuse she receives is ugly however not even the worst factor she experiences on her final day. It’s an sick omen for her subsequent posting.
She has been shunted off to St Jory, an remoted Welsh neighborhood as soon as dominated by The True Means, a cult that made sinister use of a nightmare-inducing open mineshaft in the course of the island. All historic historical past, Grace is assured by puppyish Owen (James Bamford), the one constable below her command. However because the zealous metropolis copper tries to regulate to her new bucolic beat garlanded with unusual straw sigils, she can not shake the sensation that one thing peculiar is occurring.
The locals appear unmoved by Grace’s makes an attempt to implement fundamental regulation and order. Her just lately retired predecessor Gruffudd (Mark Lewis Jones) brazenly belittles her within the packed pub. Tensions ratchet up additional when she learns in regards to the disappearance of a neighborhood teen a yr in the past and begins to query how the preliminary investigation was carried out.
For the lacking boy’s father, hard-drinking GP Ian (Marc Warren, convincingly dissolute), reopening the case affords a flicker of hope, or a minimum of potential closure. However it places Grace at odds with virtually everybody else on St Jory, necessitating an intervention by the island’s huge cheese Girl Nancarrow (one other regal flip by Bridgerton’s formidable matriarch Adjoa Andoh).
Can Grace tackle the entire of St Jory alone as an evil climate entrance rolls in? Mockingly, her latest distress in Newcastle was the proper warm-up. After enduring six months of “slashed tyres and canine shit by way of the letterbox”, she reckons she will be able to deal with some stink eye from a bunch of farmers. Then she finds a physique, and issues actually kick off.
The Pink King’s creator, Toby Whithouse, is not any stranger to juggling sarcasm and the supernatural. At occasions his cult BBC Three drama Being Human felt like a flatshare sitcom that simply occurred to characteristic a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. Right here, the humour is a continuing by-product of interacting with the oddness of St Jory, a spot the place nobody bats an eyelid on the undertaker being named Leslie Crowther. Grace’s ethical rectitude – island wild baby Winter (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) describes it as her “huge boner for the regulation” – may also be a drag if she didn’t bleakly joke about it.
Whithouse was within the information just lately when an episode of his 2014 chilly conflict spy thriller The Sport was being touted as the most effective hour of TV ever. Whereas it appears unlikely that The Pink King will problem that title, its six instalments are refreshingly distinct, avoiding that mid-run stoop that may have an effect on different crime dramas.
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Episode two sees the good Jill Halfpenny parachute in as a domineering DCI from the mainland who stirs issues up then cheerfully legs it. Episode three forces all the neighborhood into the village corridor whereas a storm rages overhead. After that, the True Means conspiracy ramps up, and Grace should painstakingly sift by way of native Pink King mythology, purple herrings and her personal invasive ideas to intuit the reality.
Whereas the ensemble solid all appear dialled-in to the tightrope tone, The Pink King would wobble if not for Mohindra because the besieged incomer grimly holding it collectively. “Why aren’t you freaking out?” wonders Owen after a very grisly second. “It’s on my to-do record,” sighs Grace, with relatable weariness. It’s a marvellous efficiency the place the wit is matched with grit.
The Pink King is on Alibi on Wednesdays at 9pm; season-one field set accessible on Sky, Virgin and Now
