The Town

This 3 part series centres around the residents of the town of Renton.

Mainly centring around the return of Mark Nicholas to the town after the supposed suicide of his parents, the show works well to keep this story as the focal point, but to also bring in other strands of narrative through the lives of other characters. Also as Mark tries to find out more about what happened to his parents, a conspiracy seemed to be developing, which made the story more intriguing.

When it emerged that Mark's mother, Kate, had an affair with Chris Franks, the officer in charge of the investigation into their deaths and that Mark's parents were involved in the death of the mayor Len's son 13 years earlier and it seemed to support the suicide theory. So later when it is revealed that it was the Len that murdered his parents in revenge for what happened to his son, it came as a surprise.

I did like how Mark's sister, Jodie and grandmother, Betty, dealt with the tragedy and how they all tried to move on. I wasn't sure about Jodie at first, but by the end of the first episode I had started to come around to her. Within this it was interesting to see the development of Mark's relationship with past partner Alice, Jodie's relationship with Harry and Betty's friendship with young boy Daniel.

Andrew Scott, Martin Clunes, Julia McKenzie and Avigail Tlalim all gave superb performances as the leading characters. Meanwhile, Charlotte Riley, Goldy Notay, Kelly Adams, Gerard Kearns and Toby Regbo are all great additions to the cast, which allowed for the sense that the story involved the whole town to be shown.