From the moment Stellan Skarsgård’s lovely, creased face appeared on screen next to a grinning Nicola Walker, I knew I’d get on with River. Abi Morgan’s shrewd, charming and sometimes trippy detective series, set in the built-up concrete jungle of east London, did something genuinely new. Fifteen minutes into episode one, we learned that Walker’s character, DS Jackie “Stevie” Stevenson, was already dead, having been gunned down by person unknown in front of her colleague.
Yes, DI John River is a maverick detective, but not the hard-drinking loner we’re used to. He sees dead people (or “manifests”, as he calls them) and uses his empathy and acute sense of alienation to help in solving cases. It isn’t a supernatural twist, but an emotional one. During River’s six-episode search for Stevie’s killer, Morgan takes us on a sometimes harrowing, always truthful, journey through grief, guilt, friendship and love. Every character in this drama has depth, truth and a teetering pile of emotional luggage. Rather than focusing just on the procedure or the home lives of the cops, Morgan has found a third layer, somewhere between the two, which allows for an element of puzzle-solving while a tide of emotion pulls you along through six intense hours of what almost feels like therapy.
The casting of Skarsgård obviously lends the show a Scandi air. River’s east London is blue-grey steel and concrete; modern buildings reaching up into the night sky, and hardly any green. That moment in episode one, where he sits high in the branches of a vast tree, is very striking in contrast – and consolidates River as an elemental figure who dreams of the lakes and forests of home.
Although it was Skarsgård and Walker’s show, and I lived for their every appearance on screen together, there is brilliant support too from Adeel Akhtar and Lesley Manville as DS Ira King and DCI Chrissie Read respectively. Her difficult home life, mentioned in passing during early episodes, turned out to be significant in solving Stevie’s murder. But she was fully flesh and blood – flawed, over-stretched, nuanced – rather than just the hard-nosed lady cop of other similar dramas. Akhtar’s hangdog sidekick provided the perfect foil for Skarsgård, particularly midway through the series when River felt the Stevie he knew slipping away from him, Ira gently moved into that role, offering him understanding and someone to talk to.
Not a single relationship in the show lacked detail and complexity. It felt so incredibly human and grounded despite the high drama of River’s run-ins with the manifests, particularly Thomas Cream, the Lambeth Poisoner, played with such menace and relish by Eddie Marsan. If Marsan is on your cast list as an occasional cameo, you’re doing something right.
This show worked because it was written so beautifully. For me, Morgan’s dialogue almost always hits its mark when it comes to the truth of the feelings behind the action. I believe everything she says through her characters and those actors sold every word.
Stevie’s story is over, but I do hope River isn’t quite done yet. Although I’ll always mourn what could have been had Walker’s character been allowed a miraculous resurrection, I would love to see a series featuring the Akhtar-and-Skarsgård partnership. I usually prefer a finished story to stay exactly that, but when it comes to River, to quote one of the 70s floor-fillers so loved by Stevie, I never can say goodbye.
