Psychological thriller The Ridge follows The Gone as another show with creative dual citizenship, one about Celtic strangers in our strange land getting perplexed by the locals and trying to solve a mystery.
But there’s another mystery that arises early on in the six-part series. Like what is this feeling of slight deja vu mixed with the trepidation that it’s taken broadcasters, funding agencies and producers in two nations to create such a mad haggis?
It has got BBC Scotland backing, Scottish creators and star, and the post-production was done there. It’s also co-produced for Sky in NZ by Great Southern Television, local makers of dark dramas in scenic places, like Queenstown semi-supernatural crime saga One Lane Bridge.
Its star is Lauren Lyle who has figured in Scottish fantasy period series Outlander as a supporting character who, by season six, was living in the American colonies in Fraser’s Ridge, or “the Ridge”.
These days Lyle, who spent some of her teen years living in Auckland, is having a good go at becoming the next Jane Tennison in police drama Karen Pirie. Though her Ridge character isn’t a cop. Her Mia Beaton (note the name for later) is rather less endearing than the feisty Fife detective from the novels of Val McDermid. She’s an Edinburgh hospital anaesthetist who’s been pilfering the opioid patches cupboard and just stocked up for a trip to NZ for the nuptials of her younger sister Cassy.
Clearly she has heard something about family weddings in NZ requiring a certain level of medication. But when she arrives she finds Cassy has taken a dive – surprisingly bungy-free, given it’s NZ – off a cliff and she won’t accept it was an accident.
Was it her ruggedly handsome fiance Ewan (Jay Ryan)? Was it something to do with Cassy’s eco-activist group that are seemingly targeting local farmers – cue a burning tractor – in a nondescript rural area, one seemingly with a police force of one and a local opioid problem? Was it something to do with the mysterious pounamu toki she was found wearing?
Or something to do with Mia and her sister’s very gothic childhood told in flashbacks involving a mad mother and a recurring theme of – yes that old one – wounded birds?
What is up with the local funeral director-gravedigger and his emo assistant?
Will we wait all six episodes to find out?
Judging by the first two instalments, I think I’ll nae bother.
The Ridge might sound mountainous and windswept, especially given its brooding-mountain title treatment and promotional artwork. But on screen the local topography is more what might be called “a bank” up the back of something we might call “a reserve”.
More vertigo-inducing is the cinematography, which can go berserk in a visit-to-the-opticians or a just-bought-this-camera-from-duty-free kind of way. It may be, of course, trying to give the thing a drugged-up atmosphere. If the acting wasn’t already wobbly enough.
The story elements suggest the writers had in mind something like Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, which was a BBC-backed show about people up to weird stuff in rural NZ, meets Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, her novel with a Scottish reference in its title about South Island eco-activists led by a, fancy that, “Mira Bunting”. But The Ridge falls a long way short.
It’s not weird enough to be interesting, it’s not mysterious enough to be intriguing and the mostly unlikable characters aren’t compelling. It doesn’t even earn the usual made-in-NZ faint praise of being “beautifully shot” (maybe all the drone camera operators were busy on NZ’s Best Homes with Phil Spencer). It’s just not very well made.
Which is a concern given, the series got the biggest single dollop of NZ On Air drama funding of the past two years with up to $3,500,000, as well as the tax-discount screen production rebate.
According to NZ Film Commission Figures, the production’s total expenditure was some $7.4 million, nearly $3 million of which the producers of the co-production for BBC Scotland got back as part of the rebate. (To put that into perspective, the spending on a six-episode season of Brokenwood Mysteries or a My Life is Murder is about $9 million, and the second season of The Gone was $10 million, the first season of A Remarkable Place to Die spent $11 million).
It’s starting screening on BBC Two and the broadcaster’s streaming platform at much the same time it debuts in New Zealand this week.
Of course, if despite its obvious shortcomings The Ridge does well in the UK and wherever else it is sold, we can expect probably another drama about a Celtic stranger playing a very far away game.
But it’d just be good if someone could check they’ve ticked “have you completed a decent script” declaration on the arrival card. Or at least before they turn up at NZOA or the NZFC to pick up the cheque.
The Ridge, Sky Open, 8.30pm, from Tuesday, October 21. Also streaming on Neon.
