Ivan Radford | On 05, May 2024

This review was originally published in May 2021, when the series premiered on BritBox in the UK.

Cush Jumbo. Jared Harris. Billy Howle. Any of these actors on their own own are enough of a reason to tune into a TV show. Put them together and you have a must-see series – and if that’s what BritBox banked on for its first original drama, it more than pays off.

The series is, in some ways, a familiar crime drama: we pick things up long after the death of a young boy in a hit-and-run incident. On the police side of the fence is a haunted cop, Nigel Strangeways (Billy Howle) who is suffering PTSD after the death of a colleague. Parachuted in after the detective leading the case failed to solve it, he’s immediately confronted by the boy’s mother, Frances (Cush Jumbo), who can’t believe nobody has been brought to justice.

But where a conventional story might follow Nigel’s attempts to find the culprit once and for all, The Beast Must Die does something a little different. Based on Cecil Day-Lewis’ novel, the show follows her as she tracks down the person responsible for her son’s death – and the result is more revenge thriller than mystery drama, and all the better for it.

That material gives the cast something meatier than your average detective drama to sink their teeth into, and Cush Jumbo is phenomenal. After stealing the show repeatedly in The Good Fight, she relishes the change to take the leading spotlight here, bringing hugely moving tragedy to the part of the grieving mother – something that not only fuels her drive to get justice but also makes her a woeful detective, as she tries to bluff her way towards her eventual suspect.

She’s as desperate as she is determined, which makes her as believable as she is sympathetic – in another show, her finding her target by Episode 2 would seem far-fetched, but the script by Gaby Chiappe (Their Finest, Shetland) is confident enough to give her the whole of the first hour, slowly fumbling her way through each step in her frantic, frazzled hunt. Meanwhile, Howle, who delivers a performance more in keeping with On Chesil Beach than Outlaw King, is poignant and understated as the policeman trying to piece together the puzzle.

But the show really comes to life when the third key player comes into frame: Jared Harris, who is unsettling, charismatic and horrendously unlikeable as the wealthy businessman George Rattery, who loves driving fast cars and intimidating other people. His scenes with Jumbo are electric, as she tries to deduce if he’s the one responsible and how she can get retribution, while he tries to figure out what she’s up to.

The gorgeously filmed Isle of Wight makes for a gloomy, downbeat backdrop, adding to the gothic atmosphere. The location and performances align brilliantly for one nail-biting scene lingering near the edge of a cliff. By the time the first two chapters have unfolded, it’s clear that we have a real page-turner on our hands.

 

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