The Jetty

Dragons In Ember

The Jetty
4 Episodes
Airdate: July 15th 2024
BBC

I can’t remember what it was that I was reading, a couple of months ago, about Jenna Coleman’s new BBC mini series The Jetty. But it had Coleman promoting it big time and I really liked her both in Doctor Who (although I thought her character arc in her last season was a bit ropey) and in The Sandman (reviewed here). And I wanted to see her in something else and... yeah... The Jetty is not bad.

It features Jenna Coleman as Ember Manning (a detective in the Lancashire police force), Ruby Stokes as her teenage daughter Hannah, Archie Renaux as her police partner Hitch, Amelia Bullmore as her mother Sylvia and Tom Glynn-Carney as her husband Mack... who has been dead for just under a year when the series starts. Ember is working a case where a place from her past is burned down but, it soon intersects with a ‘missing believed dead’ case of a young girl from years before, which a pod caster played by Weruche Opia is investigating.

And it’s quite good but also has some week spots, I reckon. Some of the episode cliffhangers are pretty great... such as when you think they have found the body of someone they are looking for in a lake but it then turns out to be one of the other regular characters you didn't realise was dead. But the writing seems kinda... I dunno... like it’s shifting. I think it may have been recut from the original order of the edit too, probably for reasons of pacing, because it occasionally suffers from that thing where one character is in on something they shouldn’t have known about yet and then, at other times, covering old ground about something they have already been seen to be knowing about.

Let’s cover the good stuff first. The performances are great. Jenna Coleman is, as always, totally brilliant in the role and, also, a big shout out to Ruby Stokes who does really well as her daughter, struggling with big emotions and getting herself into more trouble. And the chemistry between them is also really cool... a second series of this would be nice, although it may not be in the pipeline.

And it looks good too, with some nice sweeping landscapes and some nice rich colours in the night sequences. The music, which I think is composed by someone called Tim Morrish (although I’m not sure... the IMDB is being pretty bashful around that subject) is quite nice and minimalistic, reminding me a little of Hans Zimmer in places. Alas, there’s no commercial release of the score that I can see.

The one annoying thing is the old giallo trope about there being too many suspects. As Ember realises there are more and more connections to her own past, I was pretty sure there was going to be an end twist but, because there are so many characters and I had about four suspects in it, the solution became a bit hit and miss. I suspect this is the case of the writers throwing as many people into the mix as possible to try and hide the truth.

As it happens... and without giving anything away... there’s a double ending with not one but, two killers involved and, I have to say, the two people were both two of my possible suspects. So I was kinda disappointed that it went down those routes, to be honest. And, believe me, it’s really not as much of a twist ending as people are making out... most people will get there way before, I think. But that’s my only real issue with it... well, that and the question of... why is there suddenly a common thread in both this and films I’ve bought in the last year that features women ‘jacking off’ horses? Is this some kind of trending theme? And on the BBC no less.

But yeah, the show was absolutely riveting, for the most part and, I ploughed through the four episodes quicker than I thought I would. Jenna Coleman is also one of the show’s producers and I think she helped develop the role and the story (the original ending would have had someone not on my list of suspects doing the first murder)... so she’s obviously put a lot of work in on this and, certainly, she does carry the show considerably, playing a much more ‘world weary’ character than I’ve personally seen her pull off before (and when I say pull off... no, she’s not the one pulling off the horse in this). I have to say that I’ve got even more respect for her as an actress than I used to... so hopefully that’s the reaction many people will be having. I certainly think this was a good role for her and hope she continues to do some more genre work in future. The Jetty is a pretty good watch and certainly one I’d recommend.