In a sentenceKelly Macdonald makes grief uncomfortable company, which is more useful than making it tasteful
Anna Dean (Kelly Macdonald) is a mother living with grief in a legal thriller that brings her into the same story as Craig Myers (James Harkness) and DI Steven Grover (John Hannah). Questions of responsibility and loss run through a case whose competing perspectives resist an easy judgement. Around them are Lenny Dean (Jamie Sives), Rebecca Myers (Karla Crome) and Ella Mackie (Chloe Pirrie). Across four episodes, the drama follows these people through a mystery in which deciding whom to believe becomes inseparable from deciding what their suffering can excuse.
Plays from YouTube when you press play; nothing loads from them until then.
Kelly Macdonald gives this absorbing legal thriller its weight, with John Hannah providing a firm counterbalance. The plotting can press too hard, but the treatment of grief makes its questions worth sitting with.
The Victim is a good legal thriller with a troubling interest in what grief permits people to believe about themselves. Created and written by Rob Williams, it gives its mystery enough emotional weight to sustain four episodes, even when the plotting becomes insistent. We recommend it with a qualification: the people are often more convincing than the machinery keeping their predicament unresolved. That matters in a drama asking us to examine our judgements.
Kelly Macdonald, playing Anna Dean, is the chief reason to stay. Her performance makes the mother’s grief difficult to accommodate comfortably; sympathy does not settle every question about her. We found Anna’s distress upsetting because Macdonald gives it such consuming force, leaving little sense that ordinary reassurance could reach her. The performance asks for sustained attention, particularly when the thriller around it would prefer us to concentrate on the next uncertainty.
John Hannah’s DI Steven Grover supplies a useful steadiness. Hannah gives the legal thriller a firmer centre without making the surrounding emotions seem like distractions from the proper business of detection. James Harkness, as Craig Myers, helps prevent Macdonald’s performance from becoming the only one that matters. There is sufficient weight elsewhere in the cast to keep the series from feeling like an extended invitation to admire its lead.
Director Niall MacCormick maintains pressure effectively, though occasionally the determination to keep us gripped becomes too apparent. Jan Jonaeus’s cinematography and Monica Black’s production design give the drama a sober appearance that suits its subject. Neither encourages us to enjoy the surroundings at the expense of the people. That restraint is welcome, although the visual seriousness can also make the programme feel less varied than the emotional complications deserve.
Editors Mike Phillips and Paul Knight keep the competing concerns legible, an important service when a thriller needs both suspicion and sympathy to remain active. There are stretches, however, when the pace feels dictated by the need to prolong uncertainty. Samuel Sim’s music supports the tension, but the performances are persuasive enough that further emphasis can feel unnecessary. The craft is dependable; it does not always know when to leave well alone.
Williams’s writing is strongest when grief complicates our response to someone rather than explaining that person completely. It is weaker when the questions become so plainly signposted that we can feel the discussion being organised for us. A legal mystery needs to keep us guessing, but predictability is not its only danger: repeatedly insisting that everything is difficult can become its own form of simplification. Here, the actors usually restore the awkwardness that the writing risks tidying away.
Within the crime genre, this is worth choosing for its attention to emotional damage rather than for the novelty of its suspense. Its intelligence is real, even when its handling is heavy. Give it an evening when there is room for difficult people and unresolved feelings. Macdonald is not offering much comfort.
Goodman praises the series as a taut, twisty thriller with exceptional depth. He singles out Kelly Macdonald’s nuanced performance and the drama’s skillful exploration of grief and loss.
Read the full review →Mangan finds the series gripping, intelligent and full of challenging questions. She particularly praises Kelly Macdonald’s performance as a grief-stricken mother.
Read the full review →The critic says The Victim holds her attention and favors it over The Widow. She praises its tense plot and Kelly Macdonald’s performance.
Read the full review →Carson finds the legal thriller convincing and enticing, though predictable and unsubtle. She praises John Hannah’s performance as the driving force, while finding Kelly Macdonald unpersuasive.
Read the full review →
BroadchurchFor another investigation whose bereaved families matter as much as its suspects.
The HuntAn accusation tests communal certainty, with discomfort that no detective can tidy away.
A SeparationCompeting accounts and understandable loyalties make passing judgement a difficult business.
UnforgottenPatient detection gives old damage and apparently ordinary people their proper weight.
The Secret in Their EyesA criminal investigation becomes entangled with grief, memory and unfinished personal business.
Free account
Two lists that know where things are streaming, collections you can share, your own score beside ours, and Discover that remembers what you have seen.
