Passenger
A little help here, please. I was able to make sense of True Detective: Night Country, I really was. I followed the twists in Killing Eve and I think I even understood the ending of Line Of Duty.
But after the first episode of Passenger (ITV1), I simply don’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s like the cast of Emmerdale remade The Blair Witch Project. Halfway through, they decided it wasn’t working and tried to turn it into Happy Valley.
Then they added some jokes, some climate change metaphors and, in a sudden burst of inspiration stolen from Stranger Things, a 1980s videogame.
My best guess is that the entire thing is a drug-induced fever dream, churning in the head of a bread delivery driver whose route in the opening minutes takes him through an ancient wood in a blizzard.
When a teen fails to return home, DI Riya Ajunwa goes in search of her
Riya is a full-time carer for Mad Sue, her ex-husband’s mum
As he’s motoring along, chain-smoking joints, something hits the side of his truck — a pheasant? A gunshot? A demon? He has a look around and then drives back to the depot, his lorry piled high with loaves. (I can’t help feeling, as an aside, that he’s doing this the wrong way round.
Surely the point of bread deliveries is to drop the stuff off, not bring it back. This, however, is the least of the confusions.)
Much of the story unfolds in the Dog And Duck, a rural pub with strong overtones of Emmerdale’s Woolpack. The old geezers sit in one snug, chewing on dominoes and slurping real ale through their false teeth.
In the other bar, 15-year-olds drink lager and blackcurrant, and fights erupt over whose best mate is making sheep’s eyes at someone else’s girlfriend.
Outside, perpetual snow is falling. Perhaps this is Narnia. Katie, one of the teens, drives her mother’s car home through the wood (they really need a ring-road) until a body crashes off the bonnet. Instead of checking the damage, she wanders off into the trees, intrigued by the inhuman screams echoing through the night, and drops her mobile phone along the way.
Riya doesn’t find Katie but she does discover a dead stag. She calls the pathologist out in her white forensics suit to examine the remains
When she fails to return home, DI Riya Ajunwa goes in search of her.
Riya is a full-time carer for Mad Sue, her ex-husband’s mum.
But being a cynical, maverick copper is a busy job, so most of the time she leaves Sue crouched on her bedroom floor, gibbering to herself.
Riya doesn’t find Katie but she does discover a dead stag. She calls the pathologist out in her white forensics suit to examine the remains.
I’d love to see Dr DeBryn’s face if Morse and Thursday did that on Endeavour — ‘We’ve got some roadkill in the woods, doctor… wondered if you might take a look.’
Is that everything? Far from it. I haven’t even mentioned the tramp with the Jethro Tull hair, running a fracking operation from his caravan, or Katie’s violent father, just out of prison.
None of it is even faintly comprehensible. Explanations from readers would be appreciated, preferably in hieroglyphs.
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