Sherwood (BBC) 3/5 Monica Dolan and Stephen Dillane as criminal couple the Bransons are chilling additions to Sherwood. Photo: BBC/House Prods THE first season of Sherwood (BBC1, Sun-Mon, August 25-26) in 2022 was, by common consent, a near-flawless piece of television drama. Writer James Graham’s six-parter, about a bow and arrow-wielding killer on a spree in a depressed, disenfranchised Nottingham mining village where the deep and painful rifts caused by the miners’ strikes of the 1980s have never healed, combined one of TV’s most popular genres, murder mystery, with human and political drama to dazzling effect.
Graham, who was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was inspired by a pair of real-life murders in the area in 2004, and also drew on his own personal experiences. The result was a series that felt deeply, richly authentic. The reviews were ecstatic and the viewing figures, by the current standards of terrestrial television, huge.
The feeling was that a second season was unnecessary; the story had been satisfactorily concluded. But television has never shown any inclination to leave well enough alone, so a second season of Sherwood is what we get. So, is it poised to join the likes of Broadchurch and Homeland in the annals of TV dramas that were derailed by poor second seasons? Too early to say for sure, but there are worrying signs.
A lot of what made the first one so compelling is still present. The setting, a mixture of the bleak and the beautiful, is as evocative as before. The cast, both returning members and new additions, is still stellar, featuring some of the finest British acting talent around.
David Morrissey is back as detective Ian St Clair, although he’s no longer on the force. He’s now a anti-violence czar focused on working with the police and the community to steer Sherwood’s youngsters away from a life of crime rather than picking up the pieces when it’s too late. Julie Jackson (Lesley Manville), the grieving widow of the ex-miner and trade unionist whose murder kicked off the first season, is contemplating leaving the area and has put her house on the market.
Also still here are Lorraine Ashbourne as hard-as-nails crime family matriarch Daphne Sparrow – who, as you’ll know if you watched season one, has a dangerous secret she wants to keep that way – and Philip Jackson as her husband Mickey. Robert Lindsay, who grew up in a mining village and gets to use his native accent on screen for the first time, joins the cast as smarmy billionaire Franklin Warner, whose controversial grand plan for reinvigorating the community is to . .
. open a new coalmine. This horrifies the new Sheriff (Ria Zmitrowicz), who wonders why Sherwood can’t find something other than fossil fuels to lift the community out of its rut.
The proposal isn’t welcomed by many of the residents, either, who know it’s likely to reopen old wounds. The first season of Sherwood felt like a state-of-the-nation drama with a thriller element attached. This time, the reverse seems to be the case.
The bigger plot about the planned mine and the political machinations involved is, at least in the opening two episodes, simmering background noise to a more conventional crime drama. This time, Graham draws inspiration from the wave of gang violence in the 1990s that led to Nottingham being dubbed “Shottingham” by the media. When disturbed young drug dealer Ryan Bottomley (newcomer Oliver Huntingdon, outstanding) rashly shoots dead a mouthy member of criminal family the Bransons, it brings the latter’s vengeful parents into the orbit of the Sparrows.
Chillingly played by Stephen Dillane and Monica Dolan, the Bransons are the nastiest, scariest screen couple we’ve seen in a long, long time, oozing menace and the threat of violence from every pore. Other cast additions include David Harewood and Sharlene Whyte as an innocent brother and sister who’ve just arrived in the village and are caught up in the escalating violence, and Michael Balagon as a young detective suffering from PTSD. All this is taut and engrossing, and superbly well-acted by a marvellous cast.
And yet, it doesn’t feel quite like the Sherwood we know. So far, there’s nothing compelling enough to convince us returning to the well was a wise decision. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
