RIP Nicholas Johnson, for the second time. The jig is up. Twenty years of writing this character, of stealing the identity of a poor deceased eight-year-old, amounts to nothing: Maya’s got your number now. She knows that your awful tale of childhood abuse, trapped in a dank cellar drunk on apple brandy, was a lie; that the woman you claimed to be protecting from her abusers back then and just had to sleep with now out of pity was never at the care home where you supposedly met; that the woman you claimed to be having an affair with is in fact mysteriously dead – and that you probably knew it too, even as you carried out fake phonecalls with her for your wife to overhear. She also knows that woman’s name, Abigail Strickland, and that she was an undercover police officer.
‘The pursuit of truth isn’t always a good idea’
Sophie Okonedo’s performance as Maya was thrilling this week as the agonised detective trying to fathom the depth of her husband’s betrayal, trying to stomach each poisonous morsel she is forced to swallow. I found her near-primal silence realistic and poignant in a handful of scenes: in moments of true agony, language really can become pared back to its bare bones, leaving just enough energy to spit out brusque bilious sentences like “You bastard” or “This is our family”.
Where Undercover’s plausibility truly drops below zero for me is in the legal scenes, an irony given creator Peter Moffat’s former career as a lawyer. We were spared much of that this week, which gladly forced a focus on the strand we could actually care about. Thanks to subterfuge from journalist Julia, sidelined as her paper’s new royal correspondent so she can’t investigate Nick’s story, Maya starts getting somewhere. And after Nick namedrops Julia to his handler (again, Nick! You give everyone up at the drop of a hat) and just a couple of phonecalls and one letter, we learn the true reach of our axis of evil. Then, thanks to a strong setpiece scene with the mulleted former PO Rose – I knew we’d be seeing more of him – we learn more awful truths about Michael Antwi’s murder in police custody: the disappeared CCTV tapes, the lack of interviews with witnesses, the handy dearth of forensic evidence.
‘Why do you assume police officers can’t be decent people?’
Maya finally mentioned the Stephen Lawrence case, citing it of course as the reason people don’t trust the police. That, coupled with Carter’s bid to disappear Nick to Australia, which we’ve seen in real-life UC cases, offered a reminder of the magnitude of the terrifying issues this show is seeking to cover – and how short it’s falling.
We need to talk about tipping points. We saw numerous tipping points for Nick here, as he realised he’s irrevocably mired in his undercover life, that there’s no way out, that there never was. We saw how he fell in love – from Carter’s “There’s a tipping point. Don’t tip” to Nick’s “With my heart and soul I have tipped” – and we saw that he didn’t give up being undercover until shockingly late, after his firstborn Clemency (points for subtlety) had arrived.
Watching Undercover is becoming an exercise in clemency too – but I’ve decided to embrace it. I presume this episode was probably a tipping point for many viewers, after last week’s omnishambles of implausibility. But let’s hang in there, see past the plot holes and pray for less time in Louisiana next week (or at least some exposition of the link between the London and Louisiana cases) and more time for Maya and Nick’s almighty stand-off. We also have to keep watching, of course, to check that our “dangerous woman” doesn’t end up dead.
‘Go big’ speech of the week
Not so much a speech as a one-liner this week. It goes to Mrs Antwi, as Maya promises to get justice for Michael: “Then you’ll have to change the world, child.”
Notes and observations
I loved it when Daniel found the stopwatch, and asked his dad why it always freezes a few minutes into his run. I cannot wait for Nick’s demo of seven solid minutes of pressups.
Maya needs to stop driving now. I know she cares more about her cases than her health, but for pity’s sake.
“You’ve been writing this character for 20 years. Who would Nick Johnson betray his wife for?” So that’s what he’s been writing all these years. Ugh.
I was tickled by Julia trying to justify her Kate’s bad hair day story. The life of a royal correspondent is really not for her.
Was it just me who thought Julia was a goner when she was being followed? I’m so pleased it was fellow journo Alex Brady following her – and I really hope that together, they blow the story open. Though wouldn’t that mean she has to decide between her career and betraying her best friend?
A classic balcony overlooking scene there as Maya watched Bigwig, the minister of justice, have an intimate chat with his DPP pal Baby, the man on the inside.
After Bigwig said the words “But I’m the minister” to try and control Maya, I’m all for her spirited insubordination.
I loved the bizarre light relief of Mrs Antwi’s dildo anecdote, her appeal to the airport customs officers on arrival in England to “stop and search the Von Trapp family” instead of her own. But, as some of you have mentioned here, we really need to understand her grief or in fact any detail of her son’s life, rather than gags about the best thing about her son dying – “no more vegetarian food.”
The last word in this show’s silliness, and the moment that made me laugh most this week: as Maya’s life is falling down around her, she peers round the living room door – and spies Nick, serene, eyes closed, listening to Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, in 2016. All together now: “Oh pirates yes they rob I ...”
