Spoiler alert: this recap contains plot details for episode two of Marcella.
“What’s Marcella’s problem?” I asked last week. Lots, it turns out. There’s her husband Jason, carrying on with another woman and unwilling even to join Marcella in breaking the news of their separation to the kids. There’s those kids, estranged from their mother as a result of a spell in boarding school – or perhaps something more traumatic. And there’s her anger issues, threatening to spill over at any time (this week during an incident with a police bathroom bin) and likely to bring with them those damaging blackouts.
But Marcella’s biggest problem by far is the corpse she’s just discovered in a forest clearing: Grace Gibson’s corpse in fact, with her head wrapped, like so many victims before her, in a plastic bag. That Grace’s sudden disappearance would be resolved with the discovery of her dead body was always a possibility if not a probability, but linking her to the Grove Park murders was a nicely macabre twist, one that suggests that, if nothing else, Marcella (both the show and the character) is likely to keep us on our toes. While I can’t shake the sense that the whole thing is a bit ludicrous, it’s at least proving entertainingly ludicrous.
Detective. Witness. Suspect
So then, what about that Grace Gibson business? I think we can safely rule Marcella out as the perpetrator, if only because the alternative would either suggest that she’s a) the Grove Park killer or b) some sort of copycat killer, both scenarios which seem a bit too ridiculous, even in this age of morally murky detective protagonists. At the same time, we know, from those “absent fragments” that came back to Marcella en route to the woods, that she was at least involved in a violent altercation with Grace at her house. Might she have inadvertently softened Grace up for her eventual killer? And how did she know to head to the woods in the first place?
Whether or not Marcella’s culpable for Grace’s death, she’s in a lot of trouble. For a start, she’s all over the CCTV footage outside Grace’s house in the hours before her disappearance. She also managed to place her grubby fingerprints all over the bag around Grace’s head (though I wonder if the writers intended that as a moment of high drama rather than a telling plot point). Fortunately, in times of stress, Marcella’s got someone to run to. Unfortunately, that person is Tim, a DI and former colleague who’s now looking into Grace’s disappearance. Marcella and Tim share an intimate moment at hers after he reveals the news of Jason’s infidelity, but he chivalrously rebuffs her advances.
When Marcella isn’t traipsing desperately around the woods or sidling up to co-workers on the sofa, she’s got actual detective work to do. The victim of the Grove Park killer’s latest bagging has been found by the police, and has been named as Benjamin Williams. Meanwhile, there’s been another attack, this time a botched one, with the assailant forced to flee after getting stabbed in the shoulder with a pair of scissors.
Marcella remains certain that the culprit is Peter Cullen, despite a direct order from her superiors to stop treating him as the prime suspect. Her decision to bring Cullen in for questioning demonstrates exactly the sort of maverick tendencies we love to see in our lone-wolf, primetime TV detectives. Unfortunately it’s undermined by the fact that she hasn’t actually formally charged Cullen with anything, meaning that he doesn’t have to answer any questions, let alone take off his shirt and reveal his shoulder. Besides, even if Marcella had managed to make Cullen get his top off, she wouldn’t have found much, because …
Also under suspicion
It’s the baker who’s the butcher! Cullen’s boss Guy was always likely to be a wrong’un from the moment we saw him absconding from duty as Cullen’s supervisor. (Quite why a baker has been handed the task of keeping watch over a man convicted of manslaughter, I’m not entirely sure, but let’s go with it.) The nasty gash on his shoulder merely sealed the deal. So should we now consider Guy prime suspect in the hunt for the Grove Park killer? And is Cullen being set up as a patsy for Guy’s misdemeanours? Or is Guy his acolyte, with Cullen pulling the strings from a safe distance?
Certainly, I’m unwilling to rule Cullen out any time soon, given what we know of him. He seems to have designs on Maddy, the postgraduate student observing him for her study on “domestic violence that results in death”. “He trusts me,” she tells Marcella when confronted over her involvement with Cullen. Tread carefully, Maddy.
Goings on elsewhere
Grace’s disappearance prompts further fissures in the Gibson mob’s fragile facade. This time it’s Jason and Grace’s step-brother Henry at each other’s throats, after Henry “lets slip” to the police that Jason and Grace have been having an affair. Jason’s menacing stare when he confronts Henry over this admission will no doubt be grist to the mill for those commenters who fancy him as the Grove Park killer. (As noted by several of you, he was wearing leather gloves similar to the killer’s in last week’s episode). Then again, a fairly prominent ITV whodunnit did the whole “husband of the detective being the killer” thing fairly recently, so I’d be disappointed if that was the ultimate reveal.
Meanwhile, because this show clearly doesn’t have enough subplots competing for space, a new couple are introduced: Yann and Matthew. They’re friends of Henry, and both have problems. Matthew’s a skint computer whizz who’s sleeping in the back of a Volvo, while Yann’s a recovering alcoholic with a gift for being completely tactless. He manages to be deeply insensitive towards Henry, responding to the news of Grace’s disappearance by relaying the story of Grove Park victim Carol Fincher’s grisly unearthing. (He was in the same AA meetings as her – let’s get him on the suspect list and all!) Yann should probably stop cracking wise and start paying attention to what’s going on with his boyfriend: there’s clearly a frisson of l’amour between Matthew and Henry, one that’s only likely to become more pronounced now that Matthew has accepted a job offer from Henry.
Finally, Cara attracts the unwanted attention of the killer, after the trinkets she half-inched from one of her dating app trysts turn out to be the very same “trophies” stolen from the Grove Park victims. Might that point the finger of suspicion in the direction of Clive Bonn, unseen this week, but who we know frequents the murky world of internet dating? (Seriously, why is this show so down on internet dating?) Whoever it is, they’re firmly on Cara’s trail, confronting her digitally via webcam and getting her to do all manner of business with a kitchen knife. I surely wasn’t the only one expecting a masked figure to pop out just as Cara was getting to the pointy end, but fortunately for her that wasn’t the case. Still, she shouldn’t be too complacent: the killer is busy scouring the web for her location. Tread carefully, Cara. In fact, tread carefully everyone. It’s a dangerous place out there in Marcella-land.
Notes and observations
- Marcella’s terrifically spooky theme tune is a track called Fall by moody electronic lot The Bug.
- A couple of details alluded to this week that will surely become significant down the line: Marcella’s psychiatrist makes reference to three past instances of her violent behaviour, including one concerning “little Juliette”. Meanwhile Marcella refers to the “Hexton case”, which seems to have been quite traumatic.
- Marcella’s diagnosis of Cullen is too funny not to repeat. “An unstable self-image. He shifts rapidly between emotional states and often demonstrates intense rage that’s out of all proportion with the case. Dominant traits: an intense fear of abandonment and an inability to handle rejection”. Sound familiar?
- While Cara’s housemate suggests the London of Marcella is big enough for her not to encounter her webcam menace, I’d argue it’s pretty tiddly: everyone in the show seems to know each other, despite being in completely different social groups.
