ITV/STV Marchlands

Marchlands is written and produced by the same team that produce River City. I don’t really know what to make of it. It had three different families spaced odd twenty years apart all living in the same house ‘Marchlands’. You also had adverts every ten minutes. In between the adverts we know that a little girl has been killed, drowned, possibly murdered. We know this because there are endless shots of her running, which is recycled and used again and again. She resurfaces as a malign influence, the imaginary playmate of a couple Alex Kingston and her husband Dean Andrew’s daughter. Later, circa 2010 a very modern photograph of her emerges from a wall and the nursery collage, equally pristine, emerges from beneath some newish looking wallpaper. A pregnant Shelley Conn is intrigued enough not to notice that a ghostly presence isn’t waiting for her to finish with her decorating work. There are hints of clues beneath the floorboards. Elliot Cowan her husband has also been seen acting all kind of strange with one of their neighbours.

I’ll probably watch the next episode to see what happens, which is good for a drama series, but if I miss it I wouldn’t bother, which is bad. It’s bland fare.