Whenever I see a trailer of new police/detective drama series coming on, I tend to not pay much attention to it these days because I have reached saturation point with this genre. I am bored of this TV genre and find it hard to lose my ‘suspension of disbelief’ anymore.  For instance, when I watch things like Vera, Law & Order UK and DCI Banks, I find it hard to really believe them. I find it hard to blank out that this is just a group of actors ‘pretending’ to be real life coppers.  I liked the trailer of River though when I saw it last week. It seemed a bit edgier and a perhaps a bit more original than those other programmes I have just listed.  I also thought I would give it a go because I noted actress Nicola Walker was in it and I love her(Gillian in Last Tango in Halifax).

Last night we saw Detective Inspector John River(Stellan Skarsgard) struggling to come to terms with the recent murder of his close colleague, DS Jacke ‘Stevie’ Stevenson( played by Nicola Walker). At the same time, he was trying to find a girl who had disappeared.  He promised her Mum that he would find her and did not believe that her boyfriend had killed her, even though the boyfriend had already confessed.

I thought actor Stellan Skarsgard absolutely stole the show as DI John River. I have never seen this actor in anything else before but I thought he gave a fantastic performance.  His look reminded me a bit of the great late actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He gave a brilliant display of an aloof man who was suffering with severe grief and battling inner demons.  These inner demons manifested themselves by him having hallucinations of the dead throughout the episode.  We saw him communicating with the dead girl who he was looking for. There was the dead Lamberth prisoner Thomas Neill Cream(played by Eddie Marsan) who was mentally torturing DI River every time he went there. The most moving exchanges however for me were those between him and his recently dead colleague ‘Stevie’.  There was a real poignancy to their exchanges. I was moved by them in a way that I had not expected to be prior to watching. Even when she poked at him I thought Skarsgard acted it so brilliantly, that these exchanges came across as both funny and yet also incredibly moving.

The whole feel of the piece gave me connotations of a Lars von Trier film.  It was a quirky, had a welcome art-house film vibe about it, and was the most original dectective/police drama that I had seen in ages.  As the first episode drew to a close with some haunting music playing, it registered to me just what an unexpected moving first episode this had been. It was more than just a standard cop drama.  It was ultimately about grief and how this can impact on a person.  The subjects of ‘death’ and ‘killing people’ were also dealt with.

It was not a flawless piece of television because I did find it a bit tricky to follow at times.  I also found the ‘hallucination’ sequences a bit too much in number and some were slightly corny in places too I felt. That said, I am glad I decided to watch it because it had many great qualities. Notably, I liked the ‘different feel’ of it compared to other modern-day crime dramas.  I will definitely be giving it another watch next week and recommend you do the same! 3.5/5.