The Last Anniversary

What you don’t get, here, is understated elegance (if that’s your bag, watch the brilliant family saga Asura). Things often get silly. Really silly, though mostly in a tongue-in-cheek way, which is why it’s such a pleasure to go with the flow.

The show might wrap up a tad neatly, but it’s still very well made: full of big reveals balanced by surprising details.

There is perhaps one twist too many here, and the plot is a bit overstuffed. But what do you expect from a family that made its own mystery into a cottage industry? And that extra turn allows for a tender discovery about cantankerous Rose (Miranda Richardson), the remaining matriarch.

The past plays into everything, as does a cycle of love and heartbreak. But the show itself doesn’t know where to put its focus, from postpartum depression to unhappy marriages to suicidal ideation to same sex relationships to comedically maladjusted coping mechanisms. .... And yet “The Last Anniversary” nearly got me in the end.

Moriarty gave us the more-ish thriller Big Little Lies, and while The Last Anniversary (BBC One) is superficially similar – the main characters are all women who live by the sea – it is dull as ditch water.