If you’d asked me just seven years ago what I thought of Morven Christie my response would have been something along the lines of: “Unusual name. Who is he?” Since then, she has so rapidly ascended the ladder of TV stardom that the actor from Helensburgh has earned the right to round off my list of Treasures. At 39 she is probably the most junior of the hundred, young enough to be Brian Blessed’s grand-daughter, yet has few peers on the box in the 2020s.
That original anonymity could have various explanations. She doesn’t look like an archetypal leading lady, doesn’t crave celebrity status and hasn’t even done Game of Thrones. Is it down to her Scottish origins? Did she simply appear in stuff I never watched? Well, maybe it’s a hodgepodge of the above. A glance at her IMDB profiles proves I did see her in various programmes prior to 2016 and yet somehow neither her face nor name leapt out at me. She had a small role in the comedy Twenty Twelve and the same year was in the cast of Hunted, a cliché-ridden thriller featuring kickass heroine Melissa George. Two years later she featured in a Silent Witness two-parter as a generic ponytailed Detective Sergeant whose case requires our crime-busting pathologists. No, me neither. Same story with her role as Philip Glenister’s daughter in Mancunian drama From There to Here. She even did some running around in cap and ponytail in a few Doctor Who instalments.
However, it was a chance viewing of another BBC crime story, in BBC2’s Murder anthology, that alerted me to Morven Christie as someone to remember. OK, she was another DS – a rank which seems to follow her to the present day – but there was no ignoring her, thanks to the bold format of having the lead character addressing the viewer directly to convey her feelings about the case and her own life. The series title was pretty ordinary but I thought the format was brilliantly original and Christie a memorable lead.
She may not be top of the police food chain but her niche has nonetheless elevated her to the star of ITV’s The Bay. The first series was essentially Broadchurch relocated north to Morecambe but with the neat initial twist of Morvern’s character Lisa Armstrong having alcohol-fuelled alleyway sex with someone who turns out to be a leading suspect in a missing children case she’s investigating. Does she come clean regarding her indiscretions and provide Jonas Armstrong with an alibi or does she prevaricate and make matters worse? Naturally, to make the plot more interesting it’s the latter, and it all made for a gripping watch.
Of
course, this being primetime drama, she solves the case but, by breaking the
law she is temporarily busted to DC for the recent sequel.
The strength of the character and Morven’s portrayal lies not in any frantic
car chases or blinding flashes of super-sleuth inspiration but instead a sense
of empathy with victims and emotional scenes with her teenage children and ex,
into which she draws us in to her mental tug-of-wars.
It hasn’t all been a litany of cops and killers. While I haven’t watched any episodes of Grantchester, Angie and I were in the living room audience for The Replacement. The opening episodes grabbed you by the throat, as maternity leave cover Vicky McClure progressively took over the clients, trust and career of her helpless predecessor played by Christie. It all came to an implausible ending but it was unsettlingly nerve-tingling stuff.
Considerably less frothy is The A Word. As someone with a perhaps unhealthy preference for crime mysteries, a drama about the impact on a family of Joe, a boy with autism, would not ordinarily be a major draw. However, we gave it a go, and the three series have developed into ‘must-sees’. As I’ve mentioned before, notably in connection with another ‘Treasure’, Christopher Eccleston, The A Word has deftly avoided being a worthy box-ticking exercise, injecting humour as well as showing young people with disabilities as human beings with independent minds. Besides the writing, this owes a great deal to the leads Morven Christie and Lee Ingleby. They bring warmth and realism to the parents whose relationship becomes brittle under the strain. The latest series showcased both actors’ excellence and, in particular, Morven’s. We all desperately want happiness for her character Alison, while understanding that family bonds will ultimately trump everything.
It’s reassuring to find a female actor so adept at reaching beyond the outdated sex object and, like Nicola Walker to name but one, creating strong female roles at the heart of small screen drama. The days of the man as the automatic lead above the title, as it were, are thankfully long gone, and long may the like of Morven Christie lead the new wave.
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