The Jetty review: Jenna Coleman's crime drama has a fire in its belly

Milano herself commented 'Me Too', and nine days on, the hashtag had been used in more than 1.7 million tweets from 85 different countries, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Change was in the air, or so it seemed. Finally, finally, justice would be done and the balance would be readdressed, at least that's how it felt at that moment in time.

But while Weinstein was subsequently imprisoned in the wake of Me Too, as were several other high-profile men, in April this year the movie mogul's rape conviction was overturned, and violence against women and girls remains endemic.

Enter The Jetty, a four-part BBC drama about one northern English town's own post-Me Too reckoning.

Jenna Coleman leads the cast as Ember Manning, a detective who is tasked with investigating a fire at a boat hut. The property, which used to belong to her husband before his death a year ago, is being renovated by an out-of-towner hoping to make a hefty profit.

But that encroachment ruffled local feathers, leading to threats and possibly arson, if that theory proves to be correct.

Yet this isn't a series about gentrification.

While Ember is tucking into a portion of chips on her lunch break, she clocks an altercation between local arsehole Liam (Arthur Hughes) and true crime podcaster Riz (Weruche Opia), who has just arrived on the scene and is carrying out an investigation of her own.

Riz's speciality is crimes against women and girls, and her latest focus is Amy Knightley (Bo Bragason). The teenage girl vanished from the town 17 years ago and hasn't been seen since, her memory taking on a ghostly quality that begins to haunt the community once again as fresh facts come to light.

Did the wayward and precocious Amy leave to travel the world, as she often vowed to do, ticking off the countries on the posters tacked to her bedroom ceiling? Or did someone silence her – and is the guilty party still here, lurking in plain sight?

Prior to her disappearance, she was sexually involved with someone who should have been old enough to know better, and Riz also has evidence that there are other underage girls who are being sexually abused and exploited by men in a town whose beauty, while undeniable, cannot offset the rot that has been allowed to fester – both by those doing the harming, and by those who have always known the ugly truth, but have repeatedly chosen to turn a blind eye.

As Ember sets about trying to establish how the three separate cases are linked, she's forced to reevaluate her own life, particularly her relationship with her late husband, who was also old enough to have known better when he first laid eyes on her.

Her love for him never wavers, but over the course of the series, she does come to accept that he took advantage of her blindspots, an unavoidable consequence of her youth.

That painful realisation also impacts Ember's Gilmore Girls-esque relationship with her teenage daughter, who she had when she was just 17.

Hannah (Ruby Stokes) is a smart, confident young woman with a strong sense of self, having been raised that way by her mum, but even that's not enough to insulate her from what it means to exist as a woman in a world in which her kind are so often viewed as a commodity.

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Ember's journey into her own past also spotlights her strained relationship with her mum Sylvia (Amelia Bullmore), whose approach to parenting while her daughter was growing up is brought into question on multiple occasions.

The Jetty is about predatory men and the systems that allow them to thrive, but Cat Jones's writing doesn't shy away from highlighting the failings of its female characters – although it must be said that being the change in a world which is so often resistant to change is an impossibly hard space in which to exist.

To say any more about plot specifics would be to take a sledgehammer to your viewing experience, and the BBC would also have our guts for garters. But what I will say is there are some genuinely unforeseen moments that vastly alter the landscape of the narrative, courtesy of some clever writing from Jones.

As the series progresses, you might think you've rumbled its conclusion, but trust me, you haven't.

While there's much to appreciate about The Jetty, there are some elements that don't quite work.

Riz has a parody-like quality to her, a consequence of how she is both written and performed, and the wider dialogue attempts poeticism, but falls flat in places, with characters sounding mannered or overwrought.

The setting and some of the people we're introduced to also feel like they belong in any one of a number of other British crime dramas.

But that doesn't detract from what is an engaging and important watch that is likely to stir up vital conversation.

While plenty of TV shows have normalised or romanticised older men seeking out relationships with teenage girls, The Jetty highlights the devastating and sometimes fatal consequences of that power imbalance – but crucially, while also holding out hope for something better.

"I chase the darkness, but I choose to believe in the light," says Riz in the series's closing moments, a sentiment which can ring hollow in the face of it all. But Jones understands that without that, we are truly adrift.

The Jetty will be available on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 15th July 2024.

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