The BBC’s five part folk horror mini-series, written by Ben Court and Caroline Ip (of ITV’s Whitechapel) and directed by Brian Welsh, boasts an all-star cast, some moody photography (courtesy of Dirk Nel and Zac Nicholson), all the folk horror boxes neatly ticked (reasonably self-contained community seething with hidden secrets, hints of the supernatural, a touch of paganism) but suffers from a frequently overwrought series of scripts. Stripped over five consecutive nights, it also suffered from the simultaneous launch of the much better Broadchurch over on ITV (both shows were coincidentally produced by production company Kudos), Chris Chibnall’s show debuting the same night and same time as Mayday‘s second episode was unfolding.
Both series centre around the mystery of the killing of a child in a small English community. In Mayday the victim is teenager Hattie Sutton (Leila Mimmack) who disappears while cycling to take her place as this year’s May Queen in the village’s annual pagan parade. The first episode goes completely overboard in setting up a collection of the never-named community’s men as potential suspects, having them all behave in an exaggeratedly suspicious manner. Malcolm Spicer (Peter Firth) is a local businessman who lurks menacingly in the woods while pretending to walk his wife Gail’s (Lesley Manville) obese comedy-relief dog, brooding over the collapse of a housing development that has cost him his fortune, a collapse triggered by Hattie’s protest group; Everett Newcombe (Aidan Gillen) is an abusive single father, still struggling with the death of his wife in suspicious circumstances; Alan Hill (Peter McDonald) is a cop who seems to be hiding something; mentally unstable Seth Docker (Tom Fisher) dresses up as the Green Man and although he now has a flat still prefers to spend most of his time alone in the woods (“I have this enduring interest in English folklore and customs…”); and his brother Steve Docker (Sam Spruell) seems to be trying a bit too hard to find Hattie…
Around this core group of suspects orbit the show’s more interesting characters, most of them women. Mimmack turns up again as Hattie’s troubled twin sister Caitlin, subjected to unexplained showers of pebbles that may be a sign from her missing sister; Linus Newcombe (Max Fowler) is the bright but awkward battered son of Everett, mooning over his unrequited love for Caitlin while apparently haunted by the ghost of his mother; Gail Spicer (Manville, giving the show’s best performance) is slowly unravelling as her husband’s dark secrets are exposed; and Fiona Hill (Sophie Okonedo) is the anxious former police officer wife of Alan who struggles to explain her own husband’s strange behaviour.
There’s certainly no shortage of goings-on in Mayday but all gets a bit too much after a while. This seemingly idyllic little community has more suspect locals and bigger shoals of red herrings even than Twin Peaks. So much is made of the over-the-top disreputable behaviour of the prime suspects that the show frequently loses sight of poor Hattie herself. Her disappearance drifts in and out of the first couple of episodes simply as the backdrop against which the twisted relationships of the suspects and their family’s play out. She returns in force – as an unseen but palpable presence that has a devastating effect on her sister – in the last couple of episodes.
It suffers the main bugbears of all recent British television drams, particularly those on the BBC – the soundtracks is frequently overbearing and there’s at least two episodes that we didn’t really need. Being forced into a five-consecutive-nights format does it no favours and it would perhaps have played out rather better across three episodes instead. That said, there are enough impressive moments to keep you clinging on through the longueurs – the ghostly appearances of the late Mrs Newcombe, the slow and creepy transformation of Caitlin as she appears to become possessed by Hattie, the suggestion that Hattie was a witch who had cursed her killer and the woods themselves where locals claim to have been chased by “something” when they were kids. There’s clearly something very amiss with this little town, something very odd indeed lurking in the woods. That we never find out exactly what it is will infuriate some but just adds to the disturbing, off-kilter atmosphere.
The script may force them to behave in exaggerated ways but the cast are top notch, all turning in first rate performances that also help keep you engaged as the torturous plot lumbers towards its admittedly very effective climax. Not everyone will enjoy the deliberate ambiguities of the finale and the series overall will struggle to find its natural audience – those looking for a standard police procedural might find the supernatural elements and the folk horror tropes off-putting while horror fans could find it all a little tame and familiar for their tastes. But despite a slump around episode three (60 or so minutes that simply tread water) there’s still a lot to enjoy in Mayday. An episode or two less, with the tighter scripting that would have brought, could have made it a masterpiece. As it is, it’s an intriguing if often rather muddled and lethargic piece of rural horror that should help five hours pass reasonably easily.
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