The Jetty review: Serial killer drama exploring grooming of young women misses the mark

There’s a decent thriller somewhere at the end of The Jetty (BBC One, Monday, 9pm), but I’m not sure if getting there is worth the slog. Showrunner Cat Jones has structured the series so that it functions as a commentary on the grooming of young women and power imbalances in relationships. These are difficult and important topics – but The Jetty loses its footing in an illogical and confusing plot that will have viewers shrugging in bewilderment rather than engaging with the script’s deeper points.

Jenna Coleman is a tetchy rural Lancashire police officer named Ember Manning. Tetchy? How about grumpy, insubordinate and borderline incompetent. When a rich out-of-towner complains their boathouse has been destroyed in an arson attack, she essentially waves a pitchfork in his direction and tells him to go back to where he came from.

“Arsons are nearly impossible to solve, so we don’t actually spend too much time on them,” she snarls. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, but then I’d just be pandering to your massive sense of entitlement”. Suspending disbelief is well and good – but no police officer would speak like this to the victim of a crime.

A kind reading of the exchange is that The Jetty is making – or at least trying to make – a point about the corrosive effect of gentrification on underprivileged communities. Unfortunately, it succeeds only in framing Coleman as the cop from hell, which is a strange decision as the story only works if we’re on her side.

That’s just the start of Ember’s bad week. A burning boathouse is enough of a headache – but there is also the failed suicide of a local schoolgirl pregnant by a much older boyfriend. Who was the partner – and what part did he play in the girl’s attempt to kill herself (assuming she wasn’t pushed)? To answer that question, Ember needs to know the father’s identity. However, her daughter Hannah (Ruby Stokes), while plugged into the school gossip, refuses to spit out the necessary details – which turns The Jetty into a police procedural where a big stumbling point is a recalcitrant teenager refusing to help her mum.

The latest victim isn’t the only young woman to have been involved with an older man around these parts. Troubled schoolgirl Amy (Bo Bragason) has taken up with grizzled bad ‘un Malachy (House of the Dragon’s Tom Glynn-Carney), who enjoys outdoor drinking and spouting Nietzschean psychobabble.

This is all on the heels of the disappearance 20 years previously of a 17-year-old who was in a relationship with a boyfriend her senior by several years. The topic is a tricky one for Ember as she herself was a teenage mum, who chose to start a family aged 17 with her 20-something partner (who died and is introduced in flashbacks as a hipster creep).

Coleman does her best to locate a trace of charisma in the unappealing Ember. Sadly, she is up against a plot that barely gets going in its first two hours, and dialogue so creaking you can almost hear it shudder like a tree line in a gale. There’s enormous potential for a serial killer drama that explores the gaslighting and victimisation of vulnerable teenagers. Alas, The Jetty fumbles a great idea and condemns itself – and the viewer – to wandering about in the gloom.

Episode two of The Jetty airs on BBC on Tuesday at 9pm