The genre is no longer a boys’ club but what’s even fresher in The Abandons is the theme of motherhood. Constance and Fiona run their families with a strong hand, their protectiveness a hair away from lunacy.
This show still works for having confidence in its restrained approach — there’s no need to be flashy. Ashley Jensen’s down-to-earth DI, Ruth Calder, remains a decent enough replacement for Douglas Henshall’s DI Jimmy Perez, and if Calder and Tosh don’t quite have the sparring crackle of the best detective duos, they showed a modicum of chemistry while teasing the new boss, who is struggling with his long-distance relationship.
It’s the sort of situation that could be the premise for a satire in the vein of The Death of Stalin although, rather than approaching farce, the streak of humour here is applied deftly.
On and on this goes, becoming ever more depraved, a wallow in sickness that leaves you feeling hollow, nauseated. Still, let’s give it its due: it might have just offered, finally, the last word on Ed Gein.
[Siegfried's] erratic irascibility (“maybe I’m a trifle abrupt,” he conceded) actually adds something approaching an edge but the soapy emotional dramas, as old-fashioned as a Werther’s Original, made me pine for a bit more of the show’s gently humorous side, the eccentricity you get with Mrs Pumphrey and her overfed furball Tricki-Woo.
An uneventful return. Fielding wasn’t overdoing the whimsy until he digressed about a goat that had walked into his home on its hind legs. But when Hollywood suddenly proffered his hand to Illiyin for a handshake, the look on her face was one of those moments when Bake Off’s warmth can transmute into small moments of joy — no hugs necessary.
What ultimately separates Alien: Earth from other intelligent sci-fi is, as ever, more simple: the queasy primal horror of those drooling, repugnant creatures. Nasty? Very much so. But this is also frequently terrific.
