With ramshackle buildings, clammy-walled stone dungeons and clamorous dog cages dominated by a huge gnarled tree in the courtyard, Harris’s creepy lair seemed like a cross between Follyfoot and compound in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.īy never cutting away to show us John and Vaughn – the cops supposedly tasked with saving the day – this tense episode trapped the audience with the victim and created a tangible sense of helplessness, horror and isolation. The whole episode focused on the aftermath of this latest abduction, never leaving the creepy woodland home where the quarryman lives with his overbearing mother and a wary nine-year-old daughter. Fate had delivered a new victim, one we had come to know and care about, into Harris’s red rust-bucket 4x4 truck. Hidden is now halfway through its eight-episode run, and if the first three instalments felt like enough to get a decent handle on John’s character – driven, fearless and determined to do right by the missing girls, even if her shiftless partner DS Owen Vaughn (Sion Alun Davies) seemed rather less invested – episode four veered off into an unexpected direction. As well as a gorgeously gothic credits sequence, it features handsomely brooding landscapes, offbeat interior locations that go far beyond the usual bland corridors/offices of cop drama, and an ominous, skin-prickling soundtrack skilfully employed to heighten the sense of dread. Hidden is perhaps the most confidently stylish and stylised yet. Amid a current powerhouse run of Wales-set dramas (alongside Hinterland there have been the gothic chiller Requiem and the forthcoming second series of the Big Little Lies-style domestic noir Keeping Faith (Un Bore Mercher). With the whodunnit question answered, the dark pleasures of Hidden come from witnessing buried secrets getting exhumed – both personal and professional – and the nail-biting escalation of the cat-and-mouse game between John and Harris. Hidden also lifts a trick from The Fall, in that viewers know who the villain is early doors – Dylan Harris, a scruffy, scrawny local quarry worker tightly swaddled in workwear and trucker cap played with a nervy, haunted intensity by Rhodri Meilir. As well as pointing to The Bridge as a touchstone, co-creator Mark Andrew has also identified Prime Suspect, The Silence of the Lambs and True Detective as key influences, the sort of well-crafted procedurals where atmosphere and mood can be as important as investigation and deduction. Hidden comes from the makers of Hinterland, another Welsh-language crime drama that wore its Scandi-noir influences on its sleeve. Sion Alun Davies and Sian Reese-Williams in Bridging the gap … Hidden (Craith).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |