Spoiler alert: this recap contains details about the fifth episode of River, showing on BBC1 on Tuesday nights.
I think tonight’s episode is my favourite so far as Abi Morgan gently teases out the threads of her story, exposing the fraying mess of her characters’ lives.
Tonight, it’s all about Chrissie and Tom Read, the unhappy but basically functional middle-class couple with four teenagers and a nice London house.
He has affairs, she’s preoccupied with work but, somehow, they maintain the rails on which their relationship runs.
We begin this episode knowing that River knows that Tom doesn’t yet know we all know about his secret phone and those clandestine calls to Stevie’s secret phone. Following it so far?
We hear, again, the dead Haider’s words to River about their mutual alien status. “You see what people here do not see,” Haider says as River places the rosary beads in his lifeless hand.
River’s confrontation with Tom over his burner phone is met with an unequivocal, “I’m a shit,” from Tom. But we later find out that he is involved in far more than a few workplace affairs and CCTV evidence later proves him to be associated with an illegal immigration ring, taking backhanders to ensure certain applications go through.
Stevie’s laptop sits on River’s desk but, initially, he can’t bear to look at it.
Meanwhile, the CCTV from the library (finally!) features a mysterious cleaner of whom the library have no record. Ira eventually puts two and two together when he recognises the same man outside the hostel that is home to a lot of newcomers when they first arrive in London.
The man’s eventual arrest, after he savagely beats Ira, provides the key to the case as with him comes Pink Bobble Hat Lady, the translator who knows more than she’s letting on. When she finally does disclose her knowledge of the immigration scam and nudges them towards Tom Read’s involvement, the gossamer thread holding aloft Chrissie’s personal life snaps and down she tumbles. Lesley Manville’s brilliantly weary performance throughout has totally involved me.
As Ira and River’s relationship solidifies nicely, River tells his partner that he hated London when he first arrived. He came to live with his mother who only had peanut butter in the fridge. Nothing was green and he longed for the lush land of Sweden. He paints a very bleak picture. I feel so sorry for little John River and often see him in Skarsgård’s layered performance.
“You could talk to me instead of her,” says Ira dolefully as River talks about the Weightwatchers points in mayonnaise with his imaginary friend. Ira invites his boss for dinner but he declines with a brusque, “I’m busy.” They are so nearly friends now and I can’t think of another actor who would have played Ira so sympathetically and likeably.
Stevie’s family are in the police offices “filling in forms” and Uncle Mickey asks River if the investigation is any closer to the answers they all so desperately want. Marcus calls them “vultures” behind their backs. Way to show compassion. I’m still not sure about Uncle Mickey, though.
While Tom only purports to be working late, River really does head back to the darkened office to study Stevie’s internet records. The Lambeth Poisoner hovers at his shoulder, and poisoning’s what he does best. “Give in to it,” says Cream about River’s lurking madness.
After River’s outburst at Rosa’s therapy group and their subsequent meeting at the DLR station, the two seem poised to change the nature of their relationship from patient/therapist to something more romantic. I kind of don’t want them to.
He apologises (sort of) for what he said to her about leaving it late to have children and she drops the bomb about the baby she lost soon after it was born.
During their date/therapy session, River tells Rosa a story from his childhood, of finding an old man dead in the snow. A policeman comforted the young John River and took him home, but, he says the old dead man came home with him, too. “And I wasn’t alone anymore,” he says. These visions have been almost a comfort to him since early childhood.
“Some people never encounter death their entire lives – and you live with it every day,” says Rosa to him before they’re interrupted by the phone call about Ira’s hospitalisation.
The episode ends with Tom’s arrest as he desperately shouts for a response from Chrissie and she turns her back. With one episode to go, the loose ends are gathered in ready for tying up. But I don’t want it to end.
Stream of consciousness
- In the underground car park River sees, vividly, his own hands dripping with blood. Is this guilt? Does he feel that her blood is on his hands? Or is that too obvious?
- “I’m getting a feel for it,” says Ira of River’s visions, thus making a tender and generous attempt to comfort his friend and let him know that he’s not alone.
- Does Marcus show a hint of vulnerability as he asks River if he thinks Rosa is OK?
- She’s clearly wavering in her affections to him as she gets closer to River.
- Ira’s wife lays into River verbally for not having her husband’s back and I love how every spouse, every supporting character, has something more interesting to do that just turn up and provide scenery. It’s all in the details with Morgan.
