ITV’s nightmarish new crime thriller The Dark makes a disappointing mistake

It’s a tough old time for us regular TV-watchers, with a World Cup that is sucking up much of the oxygen and airtime as the summer rumbles on.

Amid that drama drought, you can imagine my delight at a nuts-and-bolts ITV crime thriller landing on our screens to tide us over until autumn. 

Based on GR Halliday’s debut novel, The Dark is True Detective in the Scottish Highlands, with an opening scene that throws us into the wilderness, where a naked corpse has been gruesomely staged.

The detective on the scene is DI Monica Kennedy, played by Laura Donnelly. She’s new in the job and, like most of the dogged coppers before her, has enough baggage to fill an airport luggage carousel.

The victim is a young, lonely man who quickly becomes the first of many in a serial killer’s spree, making use of a uniquely nightmarish method of murder. 

Distraught mother Bethany Morgan (Helen Baxendale, who played the infamous Emily from Friends) undergoes her own journey after the loss of her son, which is at odds with her husband’s (Emun Elliott) knee-jerk response.

As the six episodes go on, we see the murderer only as a hideous mask and a heavy-breathing off-screen presence. It’s incredibly effective at scaring the bejesus out of you, even if the effect does start to wear off the more we see them.

They watch over Monica’s attempts to piece together their identity. So goes this classic cat-and-mouse tussle.

Monica’s partner in crime-fighting is DC Connor Crawford (Mark Rowley), who finds his new colleague something of a mystery. With a strange branding mark on her upper arm, it’s clear she and her little daughter have a checkered past. I know what it is, but am under strict spoiler warnings not to tell you.

Except all of The Dark is already on ITVX. If you so please, you could stop reading this and binge all six episodes right now to find out for yourself.

And what a disappointment that is. Maybe it’s made worse by the current dearth of event TV that isn’t sports-related or Love Island (RIP Jasrenzo).

I won’t pretend to understand the machinations of ITV’s release strategy; I’m sure the show is being dropped like this for some business-savvy reason that goes above my head.

But I feel like I’m standing at the office water cooler waiting for someone to join me with something other than the Taylor/Travis wedding to talk about. With a week-to-week release schedule, I reckon The Dark could have delivered. 

Perhaps it was the grisly murders or the small-town paranoia, but the show put me in mind of an ITV forebear, Broadchurch.

2013’s theorising and speculation around the killer’s identity reached such a fever pitch that Olivia Colman had to enter something approaching self-imposed witness protection. Whether the reveal was satisfactory is by-the-by when the build-up is that rabid.

The Dark does manage to avoid the repetitive pitfalls of violence against women in crime drama, while also introducing a compelling theme around young, vulnerable men in rural communities (without getting all ‘what about the men’ with it). 

The filming makes the most of the glen’s breathtaking backdrop and the cast is light on duds. I would have liked a bit more of the wider feel of the place and the impact these horrific crimes would no doubt be having on the whole community.

But what I wanted even more was an old-school release strategy. Nobody had heard of Widow’s Bay when it dropped, to little fanfare, in April. Now it’s an Emmy darling with a vocal audience, thanks to word-of-mouth and a week-to-week build. More of that please.

The Dark is available to stream on ITVX. The show continues on ITV1 at 9pm on Monday.