Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Victim’ On BritBox, Where Kelly Macdonald Is A Mom Trying To Find Her Son’s Killer

Kelly Macdonald has won an Emmy and been nominated three other times, so you know she can carry some pretty heavy material. And the subject of The Victim is pretty heavy; she’s a mother whose child was murdered fifteen years ago, and has been trying to find the now-adult killer since he was released to a new life after serving a juvenile sentence. But will her vigilante justice create other victims?

THE VICTIM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Overhead shots of Edinburgh. A courtroom is being readied for a big trial. A woman walks in and becomes overwhelmed with her surroundings. A man with a scar on his face is splashing water on that face in order to help his anxiety.

The Gist: The man who is so nervous is Craig Myers (James Harkness), but he’s not the one on trial. We go back six months and see that the bus driver is the victim of an attack that happened to him on Halloween, right after he and his daughter were trick or treating. The attack happened at his house; he got his head slammed in his door, then he got knocked out. He survived the attack, barely, and he and his wife Rebecca (Karla Crome) have no idea why he was attacked.

While we see Craig getting off work, and spending time with his family and hound of a best buddy, Tom Carpenter (John Scougall), we also see Anna Dean (Kelly Macdonald) leaving her job at a local hospital and help out a young addict who she’s cared for before. While getting ready for Halloween with her adult daughter from her previous marriage, Louise Graham (Isis Hainsworth), she tells her young son that he can’t go out with his friends. We later find out why; she’s suffered a huge trauma, losing her son Liam fifteen years prior.

When DI Stephen Grover (John Hannah) starts looking into the attack, he finds out that a few days prior, a picture of Craig was published online associated with the name of the person who killed Liam Graham. Since the person who killed Liam, Eddie J. Turner, was himself a juvenile, his records were sealed, after he was released, he was given a new name and a new life. For some reason or another, the name and image of Turner made its way to Anna, and she’s determined to bring Turner to justice one way or another.

So the person who is on trial is Anna, accused of conspiring to murder Graham, whom she’s pretty sure is Eddie J. Turner. She was the one who put the photo of Craig online, inciting the attack. But why is she so sure? Is she just blinded by grief and rage? Her attorney, Solomon Mishka (Ramon Tikaram) is given a plea offer by the crown, but Anna refuses. “What if Craig Myers is Eddie J. Turner and this is our one chance to lift the rock he’s been hiding under?” she tells her law student daughter Louise. DI Grover tries to get to the bottom of this while we see bits and pieces of the trial, where we primarily hear Rebecca Myers talk about how their lives got even worse after the attack.

Our Take: The Victim is a 4-part BBC miniseries written by Rob Williams (Killing Eve, Chasing Shadows); While it seems like its premise is complex, it’s actually straightforward; it’s just presented in a complex manner. As Anna’s trial continues, we’ll flash back to the period after the attack on Craig, where he tries to piece his life back together while Anna keeps putting the pressure on via her friend and investigator Mo Buckley (Pooky Quesnel). There also seems to be something squinchy about Louise’s boyfriend Danny Callaghan (Andrew Rothney), who is older than Louise and closer to Craig Myers’ age. He seems devoted to Louise, but also very, very interested in Anna and how the case proceeds.

But, really, that’s the story: Anna tries to take justice into her own hands when it comes to her son’s horrific death, and the unintended consequences are going to be significant. So it comes down to the performances and the tightness of the writing, and in the premiere episode, both are of high quality. If you know Macdonald’s Emmy-nominated performances from Boardwalk Empire you know she’s great at playing determined characters weighed down by tragedy. During the last fifteen years, Anna Dean has been tortured by what she feels is a justice system that failed her young son, and she conveys all of that weight in her performance.

Hannah has been a reliable actor going back to the original Four Weddings and a Funeral; he plays the world-weary DI Grover perfectly. Harkness is also quite good as Craig Myers, who we don’t know is holding the big secret or not; we’re not sure if his anxiety is fear of being discovered or not, and that’s the right tone for this stage of the miniseries.

By bringing us back and forth in time, Williams does a good job of amping up the tension, where the testimony will be punctuated by what actually happened. It makes that straightforward story much more entertaining.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: For the first time, Anna and Craig get a glimpse of each other in the courthouse lobby, and Anna can barely contain her anger.

Sleeper Star: We liked Karla Crome as Tourmaline in Carnival Row, and she has the most intense performance in The Victim‘s first episode, when she testifies to Anna’s lawyer that both she and Craig have checkered pasts.

Most Pilot-y Line: While we’re fine with the fact that DI Grover is dealing with demons of his own — he’s new to the precinct he’s in, his boss just told him to stop pursuing Anna because it would be a public relations nightmare, and he’s got a restraining order on him — when he confronts the woman who has the order on him, she yells out to an entire pub: “He still hasn’t learned that when a woman says no, she means no.” Ugh.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Victim should be four hours of taut drama, if the first episode is any indication.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Victim on BritBox