Out There turns Martin Clunes into a working-class hero – it’s a shame the plot is so rambling
What makes you watch a new TV show? Perhaps it has a star name, or it’s getting rave reviews, or has a premise that just grabs you from the off. A high-school chemistry teacher starts cooking meth to pay his medical bills. Down and outs compete in violent playground games to try to win a life-changing prize. Office workers undergo a medical procedure to sever their work self from their home self. Bam! From the moment you hear about these shows, you’re intrigued. And then there’s Out There, a new ITV drama, whose premise I will try to explain in the next paragraph.
Martin Clunes is Nathan Williams, a farmer in rural Wales. He lives alone with his son, Johnny (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), after the death of his French wife a couple of years earlier. “One day it’ll all be yours,” Nathan tells Johnny, looking out over the undulating Welsh hills, like Mufasa instructing baby Simba. But their idyll is disrupted by several seemingly unconnected events. Drones start buzzing over Nathan’s land. A mysterious besuited stranger Scott Foley (played by Michael Obiora, sadly, not famous TV actor Scott Foley) enquires about renting their barn. An elderly neighbour dies, gruesomely, by suicide. And Johnny starts to fall back in with local drug dealer Rhys (Gerran Howell) and his sister Sadie (Carly-Sophia Davies), who he’s always been sweet on.
“Martin Clunes hasn’t been in anything in a while,” you can almost hear a development executive at ITV noting. “What if Martin Clunes goes full Liam Neeson on some local drug peddlers?” someone pitches. “Perfect!” a chorus volleys back. “And he’s Welsh, for some reason,” another voice adds. “Ideal!” “And, to show that he’s an old-school badass, could the show open with a sequence where he shoots a drone with a shotgun?” the work experience kid asks. “Flawless, no notes – let’s start shooting!” And so, we end up with Out There, a dramatic pancake where the core tension is as slippery and inscrutable as some of the local accents.
Of course, Martin Clunes is a lovely screen presence, even if he’s a bit unconvincing in overalls. And it’s correct to note that he’s been almost entirely absent from our screens since Doc Martin ended in 2022. The acting isn’t really the problem here: Ashbourne Serkis, son of Andy, adds to his growing reputation, even if he, Howell and Davies (aged 20, 33 and 30, respectively), are rather unconvincing as teenagers. The problem is that there’s so much going on – an uncle shacked up with a woman protesting the company he works for, late-night video game bingeing, a suspiciously absent elder daughter, a Polish cleaner who inveigles her way into the Williams’s home – yet the stakes feel lower than the contrabass in a Monmouthshire choir.
As the show progresses it seems – with no great certainty – to revolve around Nathan’s attempts to expand his farm by acquiring the property of his late neighbour. “I’d have to advise you that buying another farm is f***ing nuts,” his bank manager warns, but Nathan feels compelled, for some reason, to protect the property from vague, nefarious corporate interests. Whether or not a Welsh farmer does or does not buy a farm just doesn’t grab me, nor, really, does the challenge of steering a 15-year-old boy clear of local ne’er-do-wells. In the absence of a clear reason to keep watching, it will only be residual affection for Clunes and Doc Martin that will keep viewers glued to the screen beyond the show’s rambling first couple of episodes.
It’s always frustrating to see something in a primetime slot that feels like a first draft. And the raw idea of taking Martin Clunes – a beloved actor known for his grinning affability – and turning him into a hard-bitten working-class hero isn’t a bad one. But the simplicity of that is rapidly swamped by the surfeit of extraneous plots in Out There. Good shows are built off an elevator pitch – a description pithy enough to be recited during a short vertical ride – whereas you’d need to go up and down The Shard half a dozen times to get to grips with what Out There is all about.
