Five children – The Five (Sky1) – go to play in the woods. And that’s where the similarities with Enid Blyton end. The youngest, Jesse, is told to go home; he doesn’t want to but the others make him. And it’s the last they see of Jesse: he disappears. Missing.
The remaining four – including Mark, Jesse’s older brother – are weighed down with guilt. The incident hangs over their lives, pretty much defines them – Mark especially – though it doesn’t prevent them becoming high-achievers: lawyer, doctor, social worker, copper.
Twenty years after his disappearance, guess whose DNA turns up at the scene of the murder of a woman who may or may not have been a sex worker? Yup, Jesse’s. Presumably he’s alive, then, but is he a murderer? A client? What?
The Five, improbably, is the baby of insanely successful US thriller novelist Harlan Coben. It shows in the resurfacing of an unresolved event in the past, the skeletons in the cupboards (so many cupboards, all stuffed with skeletons) and the twists. Man, those twists – they’re like twists of a dagger that’s in to the hilt. Ouch, ouch, and another one, ouch.
It’s all about the plot then. The Five grabs you by the hand and doesn’t let go. I’m gripped, happy enough to be dragged along for the ride. But I’m also strangely unmoved by the whole experience. I’m not feeling any of that guilt, or the grief of Jesse’s mother and father; I’m not feeling very much for anyone to be honest. Characters, feelings and people are not what this is about. I’m not emotionally involved; my heart has been ignored.
That’s OK, though, because here is the second series of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix). Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s sitcom is about as human as it gets. And hilarious. Oddly old-fashioned and yet also totally now; smarter and sharper than anything else but also warm, gorgeously performed and did I mention hilarious? Sometimes it’s even true – such as about how it is that I know so much about the Kardashians without ever having actually watched them?
Unbreakable, unbroke, don’t fix, season two continues in much the same vein as the first, with Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) displaying a mix of naivety and wisdom about modern culture after her 15 years underground (literally) in a cult. And she is still messing up romantically; Dong is still married to someone else. But what a lovely romantic reason it gives for trains to be running late – to allow a bit of extra time for splitting-up couples not to split up. Southeastern should use that excuse. It’s pretty much impossible not to love Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
