Marcella review – Anna Friel thriller doesn't shock like it used to

If ever there is a “previously on …” to look forward to, it would be Marcella’s (ITV), if only to see how much they could pack into a single recap. The third season of the largely ludicrous crime noir begins with Marcella, a former-ish detective (Anna Friel, often in the bath), deep undercover in Belfast. She has assumed a new life as Keira Devlin, which she is able to do, you may recall, because she is supposed to be dead, having cut her own mouth open with scissors at the end of the last season in one of her violent fugue states, after learning that she was responsible for the death of her baby daughter. That is the short version of events, anyway.

In Belfast, Marcella/Keira is struggling to tell the difference between the two. She is attempting to embed, with the emphasis on bed, herself within the Maguire family, who live a kind of Downton-meets-Top Boy lifestyle, running the organised crime scene in the city and beyond. The fugue states seem to have disappeared without a mention, though maybe they are saving them up for one big blackout. Keira is shacked up in a nice house, with a nice car and a nice boyfriend, Lawrence, who does the accounts for the Maguires, while sneakily helping himself to a slice of the profits.

Crossing a family like the Maguires is not a wise move. They are led by Katherine, played with expert froideur by Amanda Burton, taking the cold matriarchal role that Niamh Cusack ran with in season one. As is often the plot in gritty dramas, Katherine has funded a big new housing project on the estate where she grew up, no doubt as a front for some of the family’s more gruesome methods of earning a living. She does not trust Keira one little bit, no matter how far she goes to prove herself. Frank, who is overseeing Marcella’s new posting, is appalled at some of his officer’s less-than-conventional methods. “That breaks every rule in the book,” he tuts. “Like using a presumed dead cop to go undercover?” she fires back, to which the obvious answer is, well, yes, especially one who might forget what she’s up to at any second, when the family being targeted knows she was once a police officer, when Belfast is really not very far away from London, and when that blond wig isn’t fooling anyone.

Katherine has a more immediate problem to deal with, however, in the form of son-in-law Bobby, who is both desperate to prove himself and a catastrophe magnet. Bobby looks after the docks, which is fine until a truck full of bodies exposes the Maguires’ human trafficking operation. While on a trip to London, Bobby blows off a little too much steam and gets himself tangled up in the political establishment in the most unfortunate of ways. Who is sent to investigate that particular upset? Why, DI Rav Sangha, of course, last seen tied up in the bogs by Marcella in one of her “now, where was I?” states.

If it’s a coincidence then it’s a hell of a coincidence, and the credulity-stretching twists really are starting to strain at the edges. Marcella just about got away with some of its more fanciful storylines because it was so ridiculously over-the-top. It has always traded in bleak and vicious shocks and there are plenty of those in this trigger-happy double bill, but they don’t quite work like they did. It is almost as if they have decided to try to out-grim the child-killing from last time, and have chucked everything at it in the hope that something else horrible sticks. A 13-year-old heroin addict? Beating someone to death with a champagne bottle? A pervert masturbating in the attic?

It was always divisive, but I was quite fond of its previous outings, though fond seems an odd choice of word for a show that is so relentlessly violent and humourless. Partly, I think, it was because it was one of the most enjoyable shows to watch people watching on Gogglebox, to see the audience squirm at some of its more eccentric plot twists. On the basis of this opener, however, it all seems a little done, which is a strange flaw for a series about a violent amnesiac detective who is supposed to be dead. Of all the shows that might suffer from a sense that you have seen it before, Marcella, surely, should be one of the less likely candidates.