‘Waking The Dead’: Series 9 Episode 1 review

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It’s always a tough question in television: when should you stop? Do you continue for as long as you can stave off jumping the shark and then disappear in a cloud of mediocrity? Or do you announce a final series and do your darndest to make it the best yet? With long-running cold cases drama Waking The Dead, BBC One seem to have selected the latter route – the question is; have they pulled it off?

After the consistent highs of the previous 82 episodes, it would seem like a fairly tricky task and the creative team do seem a bit too eager to kick the series off with a bang. Throwing us into the latest case without fanfare, the mystery is so mysterious for the first twenty minutes or so that it’s actually quite difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s going on.

Thankfully, the bag of snakes eventually lays its self out straight: a car owned by investment banker Donald Rees, who vanished in late 2007, turns up crashed and abandoned in the woods. A man deeply disturbed after one of his children dies from cancer, it seems his bereaved wife is also afflicted with the disease, and Boyd decides to take the newly re-opened case in the hope of giving her some closure.

The situation is muddied somewhat by the revelation that all three remaining members of Rees’ family saw the same strange elderly couple on the day of his disappearance, and by his visits to a medical conspiracy theorist shortly before he vanished.

It’s suitably intriguing, and once the muddled sprint of the first act is over, the plot settles into a brisk jog, thickening at just the right pace to keep you interested without giving too much away.

As can be expected, it’s all uniformly well-played by the cast, both new and old. The returning players can, we imagine, perform these characters with their eyes closed – Trevor Eve, Sue Johnston and Wil Johnson are still reliable as ever, with Eve in particular seeming to relish his latest stint in Peter Boyd’s perpetually grouchy shoes, thanks to having a new team member to bounce off of.

This comes in the shape of Detective Superintendant Sarah Cavendish, played by Eva Birthistle of The State Within fame. Tasked with the ‘brilliant detective with a troubled past’ archetype, it’s unclear in this first episode quite what to make of her. A strong performance – which, in truth, is a reasonably successful transmutation of a prototypically male character into a female one – is counter-balanced by an awkward ‘action moment’ that Birthistle was clearly not comfortable with. But it remains to be seen if this will be a continuing problem. As it stands, Cavendish is a pleasing new foil for Boyd, and there’re tantalising glimpses of her past coming back to haunt her.

At the end of it, with nine episode remaining, it’s difficult to really say if the team will be successful in their bid to go out on a high. Featuring the same slick production values, writing and acting as you may have come to expect after more than a decade, this new series certainly appears to be live up to that high standard, whilst never looking to surpass it.

Airs at 9pm on Sunday 13th March 2011 on BBC One.

> Order the Complete Series 1-9 boxset on Amazon.