It seems crime and thriller are the only TV genres being commissioned at the moment. Whether it’s Harlan Coben’s ubiquitous presence on Netflix or the endless parade of detectives queuing to fill the schedules everywhere else, there has to be a mystery – and preferably a dead body – to keep audiences hooked.
The Rumour, based on the best-selling novel from Lesley Kara, focuses on Joanna (Rachel Shenton, All Creatures Great and Small), a young mother who has mysteriously separated from her husband (Samuel Anderson) while he works on an oil rig.
While he’s off-shore, she moves back to Flinstead, the small town where she grew up, to be near her mother (Joanne Whalley). In an effort to bond with the frosty local mums at the school gates, she passes on a rumour she’s read online about a former child killer moving back to the area. As you do.
The group includes a solid mix of British dramatic talent including Emily Atack and Lucy Speed. They are weirdly unfriendly for reasons never explained and the town itself is a sterile, oddly clutter-free environment where modernist buildings are nestled in the middle of forests. Everyone knows each other, for plot reasons, through a book group.
Carryl Thomas as Fatima and Emily Atack as Debbie (Photo: Broadcasting Limited/Kristof Galgoczi Nemeth/Clapperboard Studios SPV4 Ltd)The spreading rumour is the inciting incident that sets the plot boulder rolling. Despite this, the pacing remains leaden as we follow Joanna on her increasingly obsessive yet weirdly sedate quest to find out the true identity of the former child killer.
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In an echo of the James Bulger case, the murderer in question committed the crime when she was herself a child, did her time in prison, and is now assumed to be living under a new identity. This could have been an opportunity to explore mob mentality and the kind of knee-jerk fear that causes so much social division, but instead, the cast grapple with one-note characters who don’t seem to want anything other than to unmask a killer of whom they’ve only just been made aware.
Atack’s character is sour and snobbish. Her husband, Joanna’s new boss, is creepy and puts his hand on Joanna’s arm saying, “You’re special, you know,” making The Rumour feel like it was written by someone who has never seen a thriller before. The actors fight hard to give three dimensions to the words, but it’s a losing battle.
We’re given scene after scene of people in nice knitwear speaking exactly what they think instead of communicating like real humans, with subtext or conflicted motivation. “Everyone blames me for the rumour,” says Joanna in another smashing roll-neck, the end of her very long ponytail perfectly tonged and swishing in the breeze. No matter the appalling events of the day, she always has time to tong.
Lucy Speed as Rachel (Photo: 5 Broadcasting Limited/Kristof Galgoczi Nemeth/Clapperboard Studios SPV4 Ltd)Like so many before it, this thriller hangs on the reactions on our heroine’s face. The director of The Rumour, Richard Clark, is keen on close-ups of Shenton trying to work things out. But her overall performance keeps us at a distance from the character: Joanna goes through such emotional extremes, but Shenton’s choices often err on the side of such minimalism, we’re none the wiser.
People in nice coats with neat hair look pensive and hold huge glasses of wine, but the endless tropes and weak plot aren’t enough to hold the attention when every other channel is showing competing examples of the same show tackled with far more sophistication.
For a plot about a child murder and the potential harm of unchecked gossip, it’s a surprisingly uninteresting saga that lacks emotional depth and any real human dirt under its fingernails.
‘The Rumour’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on 5
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