TV review: Waking The Dead | Trinity

Published on Sunday 27 September 2009 19:48

EVERY crimefighter has a nemesis: Batman has The Joker, Sherlock Holmes has Moriarty and Waking The Dead's DS Peter Boyd has … Linda Cummings.

OK, as names calculated to strike terror into the heart go, it's a fairly low-key one, but the devilish Linda has an impressive track record as a serial killer, having spent much of the last series bumping people off in gruesome ways after decapitating the governor of the prison where she worked as a warder (one way of resigning your job, I suppose).

As played by Ruth Gemmell, she was quite good fun, which is obviously why the show has decided to bring her back as a recurring threat, even though she's now banged up in a psychiatric hospital. So, as so often happens in these things, she has developed an obsession with the man who put her there, whom she now lovingly refers to as Peter.

With a hair-trigger temper at the best of times – Boyd is the type who will have a shouty fit if someone puts the wrong amount of sugar in his tea – this is not something he's happy about. But then, he's never happy: Boyd has barely cracked a smile in eight series and wears the permanent expression of someone just waiting to be told bad news.

And on this occasion he got it: someone had been killed at her hospital, which Linda revealed by sending him a present of a severed finger – well, it is so difficult to buy gifts for a man, isn't it? This turned out to belong to a patient released two years previously, while one of the staff had been suspiciously killed one year ago, so, like it or not, Boyd was dragged into her fiendish plot.

Trevor Eve could probably play Boyd in his sleep by now, having the character's mannerisms and grumpiness down pat, while Sue Johnston is also not required to do much more than sigh stylishly – she must so enjoy the classy outfits in this role compared to being in The Royle Family – as team psychologist Grace. Gina McKee, joining the cast as an expert brought in to cover Grace's conflict of interest, was similarly composed.

If Waking The Dead were a colour, it would be a slate grey: the combination of downbeat, murky storylines and depressed characters make it as cheery as a wet bank holiday.

Trinity, on the other hand, is trying its hardest to keep it light despite a strange, messy storyline which combines wacky student antics, earnest class conflict and sinister gothic mysteries.

It doesn't exactly work, but I suppose it's appropriate for its setting, since university is usually a time of extremes and contrasts (plus deadly secrets, or perhaps that was just my experience).

The acting, too, is wildly uneven: Charles Dance, naturally, is deliciously evil as the scary Dean who stalks around like a refugee from Voldemort's Death Eaters. But Reggie Yates, who started in Grange Hill before becoming better known as a kids' presenter, still has the unconvincing air of the CBBC broom cupboard around him. You expect him to be talking to a puppet any minute.

Some of the dialogue is embarrassingly bad, but I'm inclined to give Trinity a bit of a break, simply because of lowered expectations these days when it comes to digital channel yoof-focused drama.

It's not good, but at least it's different.