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The Bay, review: up against Unforgotten, this ITV crime drama is all too forgettable

Marsha Thomason as Jenn Townsend in The Bay - Jonathan Birch/ITV
Marsha Thomason as Jenn Townsend in The Bay - Jonathan Birch/ITV

ITV is spoiling us with detective dramas at the moment. Unforgotten, Endeavour and now The Bay, all running at the same time. I wrote last month about the lead characters in Endeavour being so strong that the guest cast pale by comparison. In The Bay, it’s the opposite.

DS Jenn Townsend (Marsha Thomason) is a detective with no distinguishing features. Thomason arrived in the last series as a replacement for Morven Christie, and her character is a void. The most interesting thing about her in this fourth series is the fact that her partner’s chaotic ex-wife has turned up and installed herself on the sofa. When someone has to throw into conversation the strange-but-true fact that US rapper Busta Rhymes once lived in Morecambe, where the show is set, it’s an indication that the scriptwriters are struggling.

The series asks us to care about Townsend’s son, who is busy snogging his boyfriend in the school corridor (is snogging allowed in schools these days?), and about her daughter, who is having some trouble with a school bully. But we’re not invested in Townsend or her family, which also includes a stepdaughter and a partner so thoughtful – apart from hosting the chaotic ex-wife – that he turns up at the station when she’s working late to bring her a takeaway pizza. Townsend and co plod through the evidence while grumbling about police cutbacks (and talking about “robberies” when they actually mean “thefts”).

So the show is entirely dependent on the strength of the crime at its centre, and the cast involved in that storyline. Thankfully, Joe Armstrong has been cast as Dean Metcalf, whose wife has died in an arson attack at their home. Armstrong, son of Alun, is an actor who draws the eye in whatever role he plays – intense but never showboating. He is the strongest card that The Bay has to play this series. Was the firebombing something to do with him: money worries, maybe, or marriage woes? The actors playing his children also put in good performances, and the central mysteries of who started the fire and what Dean is hiding are sufficiently engaging – just – to bring me back next week.