Despite warnings that the podcast boom is going bust, it turns out weaving the audio medium into the moving, grooving world of television is still on the up and up. In The Jetty, it is once again a true-crime podcast we're dealing with, as Riz (I May Destroy You's Weruche Opia) pitches up in a Lancashire lake town to investigate a missing teenage-girl cold case.
The new BBC drama sees Detective Ember Manning (Jenna Coleman) not best pleased with Riz's appearance, as it brings to light how uncomfortably close Ember was to this 17-year-old mystery.
Recently widowed Ember has a teenage daughter, Hannah (Ruby Stokes, formerly of the Bridgerton parish), who has two modes of expression, whinge and snark, and also a kooky mum, Sylvia (Amelia Bullmore), who does seances and brews magic-mushroom tea.
In her capacity as a detective, Ember is tasked with looking into a case of arson at the local boat hut (with its titular jetty), which her late husband once owned but has since been bought by a snooty out-of-towner. This is one of a couple of 'levelling up' strands woven into the theme of a northern town left behind.
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When Ember isn't eating chips or breaking up fights, she's sniffing around Riz, who is in turn sniffing around the seemingly endless stream of creeps in the area. Riz quite clearly spots how backward in moving forward this place is, dubbing it "the A to Z of misogyny". It's packed with almost comical levels of wrong'uns.
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The big theme here is gender politics, which makes this four-parter feel both timely in looking at a town #MeToo never left a mark on, but also dated in its focus on schoolgirl predation, which might have felt more stinging amid the rape-culture reckoning of Everyone's Invited a few years ago. At one point there's a nude leak at the school, in which we tread the familiar beats of a PSA storyline that could turn up in Corrie.
The Jetty is most comfortable in depicting casual, baked-in sexism, much of which Ember fields. Even more interesting is when she partakes in it, at one point commenting on a schoolgirl's "missing skirt". It becomes more and more apparent Ember is Part of the Problem.
As Ember's life becomes entwined with the cold case and the sprawling implications of the fire, it's striking to have a detective who in some ways is clearly competent but in others makes mind-boggling decisions. It begs the question of how we're meant to trust her judgement when it can seem she has none.
Coleman's Ember is sometimes upstaged by Riz, who we increasingly want to follow in her sleuthing off screen, and at other times by the perilously cool charcoal-eyed teen Amy (Renegade Nell's Bo Bragason).
With her fledgling best friend Caitlin (Bad Education's Laura Marcus), Amy passes her mid-teen days walking out of detention, bunking off school and drinking homemade cocktails the size of her head while reclining at the base of her dad's drained swimming pool. The rest of her time is spent leading Caitlin up the garden path or engaging in a toxic relationship with an older man, feeding into the gender politics of the piece.
How Amy connects to Ember becomes clear later down the line, but the various cases and moving parts don't exactly sing in unison even after this reveal.
There's not much more to be said spoiler-free beyond that, given that the show zags at every turn.
One twist in particular, which we really can't divulge any details on, hits with a tremendous jolt, but in its aftermath feels like a sledgehammer has walloped out the jetty's support stilts.
When it's lobbing plot at you, The Jetty is tense and watchable. But it struggles to strike a convincing balance between the potboiler crime thriller and the evaluation of contemporary sexual mores. When it tries to hit the latter too firmly on the head, it can feel heavy-handed and sometimes lazy – at one point we see a montage of used or wrapped and ready condoms to whip up maximum sexual panic.
The turning plot keeps you guessing, but also sets high expectations for a final reveal that is so unbelievable as to render any satisfying male-comeuppance sort of moot and make you wonder if Sylvia slipped you some of her mushroom tea.
All episodes of The Jetty are on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Monday, July 15, with the series airing on BBC One from 9pm that night.
Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
