Truth and Consequences: notes on Shetland, Unforgotten and Black Snow

Last January, the Doomsday Clock was reset at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to human extinction. Meanwhile, I turn on the TV, and it feels like every third drama is post-apocalyptic. Maybe some people find that comforting — that whatever happens, at least we get through it, even if we’re hunted by zombies, stuck in a silo or trapped underground. Me, I prefer not to think about the end of the world, thank you very much. I haven’t written about TV since May of 2024, so here’s the first in a series taking on nine shows I watched over the last year (none of them set in a dystopian future). Some of my favorite series — The Pitt, Adolescence, Ludwig — were just as good as the critics promised, and I have nothing to add, so I won’t be writing about them here. I’d rather focus on shows that came and went without sufficient fanfare, or ones where my opinion differs from popular consensus. Let’s start with a trio of procedurals.

*****

A clock on a wall is ticking away. We cut to the other side of the room, where DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen) is bringing us up-to-date on the details of her life since she left Shetland at the end of Series 8: “It wasn’t like an epiphany or anything. It just sort of crept up on me. I was back in London for about a month or so, and it just sort of — it all bubbled up again, and I thought, why am I here? I mean, well, obviously I was there ’cause of the job, but if I’m honest, I’ve been tired of that for a while.” This is only Jensen’s second season on Shetland, so a recap — both for folks who might not remember how she arrived and departed in Series 8 and for folks who had long ago tired of the show and missed her debut — is a reasonable move. Is she talking to a shrink, perhaps? — she’s not without her issues. After glancing quickly at the clock, she continues: “You know, they were never going to promote me again. Not with my mouth. And let’s face it, working for the Met — hardly anything to shout about these days, is it? So I figured, why not?”

The camera starts to pull back. “It’s home after all, and — my brother is here. I mean, he’s my brother, so he’s annoying, but he’s the only family I’ve got, so — yeah.” We start to distinguish something in her voice we hadn’t quite picked up on. It’s not fear, but it’s close. It’s almost like she’s afraid not to speak. “The team here are all right. Yeah, they’re good. I like working with them. Not sure how much they like working with me, but I’ve been told I grow on people.“ And now we pull back far enough that we can see something of the person she’s talking to: the barrel of a shotgun, aimed squarely at her. She continues to stall for time: “So I took the post. Moved up here about three months ago. Bought a house. It’s out near Brindister. Have you…” But she’s running out of things to say. Or maybe she senses it’s time to pivot. “Malcolm,” she says, with one last check of the clock — and we see, at last, the face of her captor. “Don’t you think we should maybe — cover him up? At least give your brother a bit of dignity?” And we cut to a wide shot: Ruth on the left and this Malcolm fellow, armed, on the right — and between them, on the floor, the dead body of his brother.

And so begins the latest series of Shetland, a recap told via a hostage situation disguised as a therapy session: one that makes it clear that we’ll have to be on our toes this season, because the misdirects and red herrings are going to come — as this first scene suggests — like clockwork.

But it’s deeper than that. New headwriter Paul Logue (who took over in Series 8, after longtime headwriter David Kane had run the show into the ground) is going to aim higher than “a good mystery.” (A good mystery would be plenty, mind you: before Logue arrived, we hadn’t had one in years.) He’s going to explore themes that weave their way not only through the seasonal murder, but through the lives of both leads: DI Calder and DI Alison “Tosh” McIntosh (Alison O’Donnell). Since its unexpected resuscitation in Season 8 — with its new lead and its new headwriter making triumphant debuts — Shetland has once again established itself as one of TV’s best and most dependable procedurals. But the buzz is gone. Audiences had been worn down over the years, and although viewing figures remain high, you don’t hear anyone discuss the show much anymore; it’s as if singing the praises of Shetland — in particular, making the case that it’s been thoroughly renewed and reinvigorated — would be laughed at by the online community. But its transformation has been a marvel. Series 8 was a surprise and a delight. Series 9 is even better.

But before we delve into the details, let’s sing the praises of these two strong female leads, who are so carefully and compassionately drawn. When was the last time we had two women anchoring a police procedural? As Logue conceives Ruth, she and Tosh are a perfect match. Although Jensen is top-billed, it’s Tosh who’s running the department — yet the show doesn’t feel unbalanced. Although Ruth is far more experienced, she’s content not to be in charge; it gives her the freedom to ignore protocol, to break the rules when she sees a more effective way of extracting the truth. And Tosh recognizes that Ruth — from her years working as a DI in London — has practical knowledge that Tosh lacks. Tosh just wants to get the cases solved, and doesn’t care how it happens. Her modesty is consistent with the character who debuted back in 2013 as quirky comic relief. (Unlike a lot of procedural headwriters, Logue doesn’t believe that one of the inspectors needs to be inept to make the others look good; it’s gratifying to see how capable Steven Robertson’s Sandy has become.) Since that time, Tosh has gained experience and expertise (and her intuition remains as strong as ever); what she hasn’t developed is ego. There’s rarely competition between Ruth and Tosh — although there are moments of impatience or concern that lead to greater understanding. And at the same time, the show makes it clear that it’s not going to force a friendship. There’s a great scene midway through where the two are on their way to interview a witness. Ruth can see that something is on Tosh’s mind and asks if she wants to talk. Tosh — wrestling with personal issues — insists that she doesn’t, and Ruth breathes a sigh of relief: “Thank God!” She’s not trying to be rude, but she knows her limitations, and Tosh does, too.

Shetland Series 9 takes on the murder of one of Tosh’s friends, Annie Bett, whose death has a ripple effect on those around her. She only arrived in Shetland from London a decade or so ago, but her warmth and caring impacted the people she met on the island, as well as those she left behind. And that means her murder provokes a whole lot of grief and guilt. A father with two sons blames himself for not looking out for her and can’t seem to channel his rage; a former MI-6 colleague is still broken up about betraying Annie a decade back, and has come to the island to hunt down her killer. The requisite “second and third murders” that typically clutter mysteries of this sort aren’t there just to kill time, or to raise the stakes. They grow out of Annie’s empathy — and the impression she made on those who knew her. (She was a loving soul whose death inspires multiple cases of vigilante justice. Logue doesn’t overplay the irony, but it’s certainly not lost on us.)

The mystery Logue devises for Series 9 is a shrewd one, encouraging us (in the best Christie manner) to make presumptions because it’s common to — then pulling the rug out from under us. (An MI-6 flashback intercuts with the deceased’s funeral, distracting us while vital clues are dropped; a character whose name keeps cropping up in the investigation ends up having no real relevance to the case.) But mostly Series 9 is about the impact we have — wittingly or not — on others, and how we in turn are defined by the company we keep. It’s about the changes to our lives that we see clearly only in retrospect, and the mistakes of the past that we can’t seem to escape. It’s about the friends and colleagues who exit our lives and those who arrive to take their place, and it’s about the challenges of making a fresh start. And those themes are explored not only in the solving of the crime — in the details we learn about the victim, the witnesses and the suspects — but in the issues Ruth and Tosh themselves are forced to confront through the course of the series.

Series 9 asks about the personal and professional worlds we create for ourselves, and how they intersect. How well do we know the people we live and work with? How strong are our bonds, and how easily are they tested? Should loyalty override our sense of fair play and justice? Throughout Series 9, Tosh keeps finding herself at odds with her closest friends, who resent being seen as witnesses and suspects and bristle at her interrogations. O’Donnell has long described her character as being an empath, but the murder in Season 9 forces Tosh to bury her empathy, and Ruth — who prides herself on being aloof — to develop hers; while Tosh wrestles with the loss or redefinition of longtime relationships, Ruth grapples with her self-imposed isolation. (As the first scene in the series reminds us, opening up to others — for Ruth — is something done only under duress.) Ruth has long prided herself on being a loner (she even looks for reasons to push away her own brother), but through the course of the investigation, she finds herself becoming a confidante to Annie’s young son, who has receded into a fantasy world that no one can decipher. With no natural ability to talk to children, Ruth is forced to think on her feet, and her improvisations prove smarter and shrewder than the police’s dull, dry interrogations; she finds a way of getting through, and the more her efforts yield results, the more protective she becomes. And as a result, there are wonderful character arcs for both leads — growing pains that perhaps aren’t so surprising for Ruth in her second series, but certainly are for Tosh in her ninth. (Fittingly, for a murder that takes place among Tosh’s friends, and an investigation that casts a spotlight on them, the solution hits close to home. It hits a little too close to home — forcing Tosh to put aside painful memories and waves of anger that haunt her to this day, and remain almost ruthlessly objective.)

The series’ final scene — set in a restaurant overlooking the sea — is an eloquent encapsulation of all that’s come before it. Tosh stops by for a bite to eat and is invited to sit with the same friends who’ve been icing her out for weeks; with the case behind them, they’re ready to reach out again — but she declines the offer, choosing to dine alone. Throughout the investigation, Tosh kept insisting she was still the same friend and girlfriend she’d always been. But now she’s come to accept that she’s not; she’s fundamentally changed — not merely because of her obligations to the community, but because of the ways in which she’s viewed by those she serves. And she has no reason to apologize for that; perhaps, in fact, she’s ready to embrace it. So she sits alone at a table by a window for a bit, until someone eases into the seat across from her — and it’s Ruth. Maybe they’ve enjoyed a meal together before; maybe not. But their body language reveals that this feels comfortable — and right. Through the course of the case, Tosh has come to realize that — as much as she loves her friends — Ruth understands the challenges she faces in a way they can’t. And as for Ruth, for all her resistance to getting entangled in other people’s lives, she’s seen that opening up to others can make her a better detective — and maybe a better person. (Ruth, one senses, won’t be tempted to leave Shetland again anytime soon.) She can’t work with a team of detectives and feign being a loner; she’s grown ensnared in Tosh’s life simply by becoming a part of it. And she’s OK with that.

*****

In 2019, in the third series of Unforgotten, Chris Lang denounced the destructive power of a media more interested in clickthroughs and controversy than the truth. Series 6 — which debuted on ITV in February, and is due to premiere on PBS next month — is the first time I’ve felt him as incensed. Lang took on Gen Z’ers who manufacture faux outrage at every perceived slight, making it impossible for the adults in the room to speak. Lang imagined a history professor at a London university, Juliet Cooper (Victoria Hamilton, at her rawest), who had been stopped after class by a student, insistent that the curriculum wasn’t diverse enough. Cooper offered to recommend a few worthy books, and did — and in one of them, a highly-regarded Black author (a prominent figure in the civil rights movement) had included the N-word in the title, to express her own experience growing up in a post-colonial Britain. And the student — a white student, mind you — proceeded to file a complaint against Cooper, declaring that she felt “very traumatized to be confronted with that word without any preparation.” Now the student union has gotten involved, demanding not merely that Cooper apologize, but that she be disciplined — and the university has alerted her that they’re prepared to cave to the students’ demands. (The department head, practically cowering behind his desk, offers this as justification: “They effectively pay our salaries.”)

And Cooper — who’s about to learn that the husband she thought killed himself four years ago was in fact murdered, so she’s going to have a lot on her plate — tries to clarify to her colleague why they can’t give in to these sorts of guerrilla tactics: “Think back to when you were 21. I mean, seriously, Paul. They don’t understand real life yet, with all its shit compromises and messy imperfect solutions. And surely part of our job is to teach them about that.” The student union is insisting she attend a class in microaggression, and the department head implores Cooper, “Isn’t it just easier to say yes?“ The camera fastens on her for a good 10 to 15 seconds, so you can understand how seriously she’s weighing the question and appreciate how well-considered her response is: “You know what? It actually isn’t. Because what will it be next? It’s also not fair — to us, sure, but much more importantly, it’s not fair to them.”

I think it’s safe to say that at that moment — and for scenes and episodes after — you love this character. You recognize that she can be a bit strident and opinionated — and maybe, from the way Hamilton pitches it, that she has a chip on her shoulder. But as the only adult in the room, she feels like the last line of defense against an army of misguided youths with too much power — and your affection only grows when she agrees to sit down with the student union, and this particular undergraduate, Liz, is just as self-indulgent and self-entitled as you feared: “We need a curriculum that allows space for a properly critical understanding of racism, capitalism, and colonialism as paradigmatic systems of oppression. And you giving me that book suggests you have no desire to go on that journey.” Cooper tries to explain herself: “My giving you that book was entirely part of that journey. It was an attempt to allow you to understand the life of a woman who, first hand, had experienced many of the oppressions you've just described.” But the student isn’t listening: “The book, maybe. I haven't read it. You giving it to me, no. It angers you that I have a strong opinion, so you used the title as a weapon to anger me.” Cooper counters, “No, I just wanted you to read it,” and in an effort to put the conversation into perspective, insists, “You are proper smart, Liz, you are super passionate. But please, there are so many more important things in this world to get angry about.” (The student’s response is almost as predictable as it is pathetic: “Are you seriously telling us what we can be angry about now?”)

And once Lang has ensured that you trust Cooper, he has you exactly where he wants you, because it’s right around this point that you come to realize that Cooper — who’s been brought in several times by the police for questioning — has been stringing them along with a mix of half-truths and out-and-out lies. (In that respect, she’s no different from any of the other suspects: among them, an outspoken TV commentator and an autistic man caring for an infirm mother.) Lang gets you to warm to a character you should know better than to side with; hell, in any other murder mystery, she’d be the prime suspect: the wife of the deceased.

The sixth and latest series of Unforgotten is full of clever writer- and character-driven misdirects like that. It’s also topical and heated in a way that previous series haven’t been; you can feel Lang’s fury. Just as he takes on the follies of Gen Z, who have distorted public discourse, he tackles right-wing commentators who feign outrage for ratings. And he has plenty to say, too, about the folks whose conspiracy theories — about the efficacy of COVID vaccines, in particular — have made the world less safe, as well as those who profited during the early months of the pandemic by taking advantage of the prevailing poverty and despair. You’re surprised to see Lang bare so much of his soul in Series 6; what’s unsurprising is that the case itself is as absorbing as ever. And the way he integrates the two lead detectives’ personal lives is a marvel.

A challenge for all procedurals is to make the subplots as compelling as the hunt for a killer. How do you keep them from feeling like distractions? In Series 6, Lang juggles a personal story-line that feels consequential (the dissolution of a marriage) with one that could seem frivolous by comparison (you might call it “adventures in dating”). He gives them weight by establishing them right at the start. We first spot DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) seated alone at a restaurant, at the end of a workday. The waiter inquires if he’d like something to drink while he’s waiting for the other party to arrive, but no, Sunny admits — with equal parts embarrassment and irritation — he’s there alone. You have just enough time to reflect on all the relationships Sunny has messed up over the years — and then a call comes in that a body has been found. Meanwhile, DCI Jessie James (Sinéad Keenan) arrives home to the sound of her two sons watching TV. As she hangs up her things, she spots something on her husband‘s coat: a long blonde hair that clearly doesn’t belong to any of them. Her husband — who admitted to a brief dalliance last season, but insisted it meant nothing — announces dinner is ready, but before she can sit down, she gets notified about the new case. Sunny’s need for a social life and Jess’s marital suspicions (or is it issues?) are clearly going to be prominent in Series 6, and because we’re alerted early on to the journeys these two characters have to take — journeys that, we intuit, are vital to their well-being — those subplots become crucial to the texture of the series.

And from there, we never know whether Lang will set down in the hunt for a killer or in a subplot that furthers the characters’ personal lives, but wherever we land, we’re equally engaged. As uncomfortable it is to watch the victim’s dismembered remains dredged from the marsh, it’s no easier watching Sunny self-destruct as he tries to date a colleague, lapsing into a series of rookie mistakes. And as riveting as it is to watch the detectives spar with suspects, no exchange is as gripping as Jess’s showdown with her sister about her involvement with Jess’s husband. (As Jess’s sister, Keenan’s real-life sibling Gráinne is a one-scene wonder: agonizing as she tells her sister the very words she doesn’t want to hear, in order to heal the wound between them.) Yet as prominent as the subplots grow, they never interfere with the case at hand. Sunny and Jess multitask impressively, and their detective skills are sharper than ever. You watch each interrogation wondering, how will they get at the truth? Which piece of evidence will they use to break down the suspect’s defenses, to throw them off their game? Lang never falls prey to that procedural trope where the detectives spend the bulk of each interrogation accusing the suspect of murder, waiting for them to crack. Sunny and Jess have mastered the value of patience in solving crimes, and the art of feigning patience as a tactic. And the show only took one season to fully recognize and play to Sinéad Keenan’s strengths. Jess is both softer and tougher than Nicola Walker’s Cassie Stuart, with an appealing directness — and her personal life is engrossing in a way that Cassie’s, with her onscreen father and son hogging the spotlight, never was. (The show hasn’t missed a best since Walker’s departure; small wonder this latest series premiered to a staggering 7.4 million viewers, making it the second highest-performing British drama of the last year.)

I’ve rarely seen a murder mystery make better use of one deliberately vague line of dialogue — in this case, the victim’s daughter grilling her mother, “Have you told the police about the row that night?” A row between whom? On which night? (The latter question grows particularly pertinent as the detectives start to question the date of the murder.) Yet Lang, as always, plays fair with us. When characters withhold information from the police, there’s always a good reason — and more often than not, that reason has nothing to do with them being guilty of the crime. Their lives are messy, and busy, and private — and sometimes, it’s not in their best interests to be honest with law enforcement. As in every Unforgotten series, the reopening of the murder investigation prompts the suspects to take stock of the person they hoped to be and the one they’ve become — and reconcile the difference. I’ve talked elsewhere about Unforgotten’s gift for illuminating the challenges of outrunning the past; Series 6 charts another of life’s hard truths. Just as the latest series of Shetland fortifies its themes by linking the lives of the victim and suspects with those of the detectives, Lang adopts a similar strategy; through the course of the investigation and through the insertion of the subplots, he advances his own thesis: laying waste to the commonly-held belief that the more time you spend with people, the better you understand them. For all of Lang’s outrage in Series 6, there’s also a gratifying ambiguity: an acknowledgement that as the world has gotten harsher, it’s also gotten harder to read. It’s easy to overanalyze a situation, to get the details wrong. The complexities of modern life make it tough to spot the difference between selfishness and self-preservation, between acts committed in anger and those driven by fear or mercy. And when motivations are this hard to decipher, who’s the victim? Does guilt need to be measured in degrees? At what point do the detectives have to admit that — like the student unions and their bloody purity tests — they’ve grown too eager to affix blame instead of getting at the truth?

*****

The second season of the Australian series Black Snow (available in the US on AMC+, and in the UK on BBC iPlayer) gives us a fabulous mystery with a singularly unsatisfying solution. I think you’d be advised to watch the season now and muse about that misstep later. In the old days, I used to say that if the writers couldn’t nail the ending, it was hard for me to make peace with a show. (I think I had the voice of Madame Rose from Gypsy in my head, insisting, “If you’ve got a good finish, they’ll forgive you for anything.”) Now I seem to be much more accepting of series that can’t quite stick the landing.

As I discussed in my review of the first season, the beauty of Black Snow is that — like Unforgotten — it reinvents the cold-case structure. Instead of relegating the victim’s life to the memories of friends and family — instead of establishing a fixed present tense and unveiling the murder in flashback — writer/creator Lucas Taylor flips the script. He alternates between two timelines: the victim’s final weeks and the present-day investigation. And in doing so, he not only transforms the cold-case framework, but prompts us to reassess the very validity of its premise. As you watch the victim’s final conversations and confrontations play out, it becomes distressingly clear that the detective — as good as he is — is never going to sort it all out. There’s no way he can nail down all the nuances of character, all the seemingly insignificant interactions that sealed her fate. Not that you suppose he’ll finger the wrong suspect, but the subtleties are lost to history. (The question no longer becomes “can he solve the crime” but “how close can he get to the truth?”) The typical cold-case scenario, by relying on the memories of the survivors, elevates them at the expense of the victim. Black Snow redresses the balance. It makes the victim the most vivid character on the screen.

Season 2 takes on the case of Zoe Jacobs, last seen at her 21st birthday celebration in 2003. Late that night, she left town and never returned. Her departure wasn’t unexpected — she’d let everyone know that she was taking the inheritance money that was due her and heading off to see the world. Folks were surprised when she never returned — yet remarkably, few suspected foul play. As we learn through the course of the series, Zoe burned a lot of bridges in her final weeks in Moorvale; she made a lot of discoveries that soured her time there. Friends and family — recognizing her discontent — presume she’s spent the last twenty years forging a new life under happier circumstances. But when new evidence comes to light that suggests she never left town — or if she did, then not of her own accord — all the old hypotheses have to be readdressed.

In most cold cases of this sort, when a victim goes missing, you wait for the police to discover that it was, in fact, murder; after all, how many shows can resist the urge to produce a dead body when it’s least expected, and in grisly fashion? But the more you learn about Zoe, the harder it is to imagine she fell prey to foul play. If anything, as Zoe approaches her 21st birthday, she seems to be wising up to the ways of the world — and fast. Events in the town help politicize her: she begins to rail against domestic abuse, against the displacement of the poor, against political graft. She grows almost restlessly curious and proactive; when she discovers her ex-boyfriend Sean has been taking nude photos of her (as well as dozens of other girls in town), she has no compunction about breaking into his house and stealing his camera. That’s not to say that Zoe is tough through and through; there’s a sweetness you suspect is left over from childhood and a self-absorption emblematic of adolescence — plus she can be remarkably obtuse. (At family gatherings or at her father’s workplace functions, she loves imagining the conversations she sees playing out, but she misinterprets most of them. For all her precociousness, Zoe still has a lot to learn.)

Jana McKinnon, a young actress who’s already amassed some impressive credits, is an inspired choice to play Zoe. Driving around Moorvale in her short shorts and semi-sheer leggings and black ankle boots, she’s the idealized independent young woman — but her face betrays the awkward innocence of youth. There’s something oblique about her features, like she’s still trying to figure out the world even as she passes judgment on it. And McKinnon makes it clear how Zoe, rocked by a series of heartbreaks in her final weeks, has seen her self-esteem tumble. She feels like she’s forever letting people down. She fails to recognize a friend’s cry for help, and he commits suicide. She wounds another friend when she gets wrapped up in her own romantic entanglements, and their relationship sours. Even her own father — who’s trying to navigate a struggling construction business — sees her dangerous mix of curiosity and obliviousness and cautions her, “You’ve been making bad decisions that could damage my reputation.” Zoe has come to see her hometown as a cesspool of graft and injustice, yet she’s pretty much misread or muffed up every major relationship in her life. Of course she left town. But letting down her guard long enough to fall prey to a killer? If you know Zoe — and Taylor and McKinnon are careful to make you feel like you do — it just doesn’t track. And do any of the suspects we’ve met seem like cold-blooded killers? Not really. The brilliance of Black Snow Season 2 is that it lets you fall into the same traps as the victim’s family and friends in 2003.

But Season 2 isn’t just about the search for Zoe Jacobs; it’s about the hunt for the brother of Detective James Cormack (lead Travis Fimmel), long believed dead. Season 1 kept dropping hints about Cormack’s upbringing (his father murdered his mother, and was serving out a prison sentence); we recognized how Cormack, unable to shake the abuse he suffered as a child, felt a need to punish himself for his past. Season 2 digs deeper into Cormack’s troubled psyche. Fimmel makes you privy to the torment that he feels and that he inflicts upon himself, but he also lets you see how he has trained himself to tuck it all away and get down to work. In his interrogations, he effects a relaxed, slouchy posture designed to charm and disarm even the most sanctimonious of suspects; even the shrink who has been assigned to sign off on his fitness for work can’t seem to resist him. With his hornrimmed glasses and Garibaldi beard, Cormack manages to seem quirky yet comforting, and he can be especially compassionate when it comes to dealing with the victim’s most fragile friends and family members. In Season 1, he conducted the investigation solo; Season 2 — which finds him hunting for two missing persons at once — gives him a partner: a local cop (played by Megan Smart), who happens to have been Zoe’s best friend Samara. In some ways, Samara seems like the oddest of officers; a divorced mother, she has the air of someone consumed by sadness, as it she became a cop as a way of doing penance. You can tell she’s good at her job, but she’s oddly isolated from the community she grew up in. On Shetland, Tosh had to deal with the awkwardness of interviewing suspects she was close to; Samara doesn’t seem to have stayed close to anybody in Moorvale — as if once Zoe left town, she herself had nothing left to hold onto. That said, when Samara takes over the detective work (while Cormack is off hunting for his brother), she acquits herself nicely, and her connection to the case gives it added poignancy. In an especially touching juxtaposition of scenes (one of many smooth and strong transitions the show manages from past to present and back again), Zoe is playing a song at the radio station where she does a weekly show, then we cut to Samara at the police station, listening to a cassette tape of that same broadcast (and that same song in particular) and weeping at all she’s learning about Zoe — and all she’s lost.

Taylor is a generous storyteller. He lets us know about investigative dead ends even before the detectives themselves become aware of them; because we’re watching the events of the past play out in detail, we’re occasionally aware that leads the detectives are pinning their hopes on aren’t going to pan out. But we don’t feel cheated; we feel empowered. We appreciate not being led down the usual procedural garden paths. Taylor has a good command of all the tropes of cold-case story-telling, including outlining the reasons that people lied or withheld information during the original investigation. (Here, because it was viewed as a missing persons case, friends and family were reluctant to reveal sensitive information that — when Zoe finally returned — she might have resented others making public.) And Taylor has a good handle, too, on what events of this magnitude do to people over time. Sometimes the transformations are simple ones: the uncle who swore off drinking, the drifter who decided to settle down. But other characters didn’t get off so easily. Her mother’s hunt for her missing daughter became an obsession with saving all young women her age — to the exclusion of raising and caring for her own son. (Scraping by now in a caravan, she seems one disappointment away from breaking down completely.) Zoe’s ex, Sean — a stalker and a pervert — never had to take responsibility for his actions once Zoe left town; instead, he trusted that his mother, a corrupt politician, would believe his lies and bail him out of any scrapes. 22 years later, their relationship has grown disturbingly codependent. Now in his 40’s, Sean still comes home to mama begging her to bury his mistakes, and once she does, he buries his head in her lap like an adoring six-year-old. (And because Zoe was never able to go public with her knowledge of Sean’s crimes, his mother is only now beginning to understand the kind of monster she raised — now, when it’s too late to do anything other than shield him.)

And yet for all of Taylor’s achievements in structure, plotting and characterization, the final hour is remarkably tone deaf. After dropping so many clues along the way, he relies on few to finger the perpetrator. There’s almost no hard evidence; the big reveal rests on one phone call, hardly the sort of proof that would hold up in court. It’s like one of those Miss Marple mysteries where she apparently stumbles upon the identity of the killer by divine intervention — only here the detectives rely on a phone number and a drunken confession. The final scenes set in 2003 continue to crackle all the way to the end; you come to understand why certain family members couldn’t bear to imagine that Zoe was gone, while others were quick to pronounce her dead. But the present-day solution to the mystery feels like a scramble and a fumble, and then the final 30 minutes are consumed with Cormack’s continued search for his brother, as Taylor sets up an anticipated third season. So he ends up diminishing Zoe’s case by positioning it as the prologue to a case that apparently matters more — not the sort of message you want to deliver to an audience who have just invested six hours of their time. And riotously, Taylor spends this last half hour setting up a season that hasn’t even been commissioned yet. There’s no word on whether Black Snow will be picked up for Season 3. So what are we left with? If the series does get renewed, maybe Taylor can restore some of the good will Season 1 engendered, with an engrossing mystery where actual clues — and not just a confession — lead to a conviction. If the show is canceled, then we’re left with one of the more harebrained moves in TV history: taking 30 minutes to set up a story-line that never materialized. Shrewd move or foolish gamble? Let’s hope this particular mystery — unlike the disappearance of Zoe Jacobs — doesn’t take two decades to be resolved.

Want more? I make the case for my favorite sci-fi series of 2024, Constellation. Elsewhere, check out an essay called "The Fatal Blow", highlighting three noir-tinged dramas, Dark Winds, Black Snow and Blue Lights; an essay called "Negotations", in praise of three series that brightened my 2022: Minx, The Ipcress File and Inside Man; an essay called "Men in the Middle," highlighting four drama series that owe much of their success to the onscreen personas of their leading men: The Tourist, This Is Going to Hurt, The Responder and Around the World in 80 Days; an essay entitled "Rough Edges," in praise of two addictive comedies that I discovered in 2021, Back to Life and The Other Two; another entitled "Private Faces," highlighting two spectacular series that emerged in the fall of 2020, Roadkill and Life; and a fifth called "Unwilling Victims," taking a look at three recent series by and about women: The Trial of Christine Keeler, Deadwater Fell and Flesh and Blood. I offer up The Five Best TV Shows You Might Not Be Watching, Five Foreign TV Dramas You Shouldn't Miss, and my most personal essay, inspired by the death of my puppy Czerny in June of 2021, The 10 Most Comforting TV Episodes About Death.

If you like in-depth looks at hit shows, I delve into Rhoda Season 3, Maude Season 2, Newhart Season 7, One Day at a Time Season 7, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2; serve up my 10 Best Episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Designing Women, WKRP in Cincinnati, Everybody Loves Raymond and Kate & Allie; pen an appreciation of Mike & Molly; and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons. Or if you prefer dramas, check out my write-ups of of Criminal Minds Season 8, Judging Amy Season 6, Voyager Season 4, Doctor Who Series 8, Cold Case Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent, ill-judged Netflix miniseries), and fourteen essays devoted to all the seasons of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing, starting here. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries: not (necessarily) the best episodes, but the best whodunnits.