It's becoming a familiar theme in TV dramas – the London detectives who move to quiet provincial towns but find themselves yearning for "the big cases and exciting days of old".
"Be careful what you wish for!" said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian by way of advice to these fictional police officers. Because "from Midsomer to Grantchester, the Calder Valley to Shetland, nowhere is safe from TV writers", said The Independent.
Perhaps if these policemen and women had watched more British murder mysteries, they'd be aware that "behind the picture-book hills and lakes, stone-walled lanes, and villages with nothing more than a pub and post office, there is plenty to be feared".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Suffering from a "sense of being outside the action", Riya soon has to draw together "disparate threads of local discontent: a missing Swedish tourist, a strange road traffic accident, and the re-emergence of a man, Eddie Wells (Barry Sloane), who she put away for a violent crime five years earlier". And there's also trouble at the bread factory and a "subplot involving protesters at a fracking site".
Actor Andrew Buchan ("Broadchurch", "The Crown") makes "his screenwriting debut with this pleasingly off-kilter show that understands TV crime drama lore", said Gabriel Tate in The Telegraph. Veering from "dark comedy to folk horror to backwoods puzzle box, touching on ecowarriors, left-behind communities" and the "isolating, anxiety-inducing effects of the teenage addiction to screens", it "ends somewhere wholly unexpected… yet just about plausible".
"It should all make for a gripping mix," said William Hosie in the London Evening Standard. But he feels it is trying to do too many things all at once. "Is 'Passenger' meant to be horror, crime thriller, or kitchen-sink satire? Who knows."
The Guardian's Mangan thinks the "mundane and the mystical" are kept in a "nice balance, each one enhancing the potential horror of the other". The show "leans into its folkloric and televisual tropes", she said, "while still delivering something that feels fresh and real".
-
10 concert tours to see this fallThe Week Recommends Concert tour season isn't over. Check out these headliners.
-
Video games to curl up with this fall, including Ghost of Yotei and LEGO PartyThe Week Recommends Several highly anticipated video games are coming this fall
-
10 upcoming albums to stream during spooky seasonThe Week Recommends As fall arrives, check out new albums from Taylor Swift, Jeff Tweedy, the Lemonheads and more
-
A Spinal Tap reunion, Thomas Pynchon by way of Paul Thomas Anderson and a harrowing Stephen King adaptation in September moviesthe week recommends This month’s new releases include ‘Spinal Tap II,’ ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘The Long Walk’
-
Don't fly by the seat of your pants. Do it the healthy way with these airborne tips.The Week Recommends Yes to stretching. Even more yesses to hydration.
-
'The Office' spinoff, a 'Mare of Easttown' follow-up and the Guinness family royalty in September TVthe week recommends This month's new television releases include 'The Paper,' 'Task' and 'House of Guinness'
-
One great cookbook: 'Jam Bakes'The Week Recommends A guide to pristine jam-making, plus the baked goods that love them
-
September's books tell of friendship in middle age, teachers versus fascists, and Covid psychosisthe week recommends September books include Angela Flournoy's 'The Wilderness,' Randi Weingarten's 'Why Fascists Fear Teachers' and Patricia Lockwood's 'Will There Ever Be Another You'
