'THE DEEP' 1.1 - "To The Furthest Place"

[SPOILERS] Clumsily written, formulaic, and with flat photography only outdone by the performances, The Deep began its five-part voyage on a damp note -- but one that eventually stoked interest thanks to a wave of action and a reveal that avoided preconceptions of a riff on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea...

2,000 feet below the Arctic Ocean, just above the Elysian hydrothermal vents, undersea explorer Catherine (Orla Brady) was apparently killed while in a submersible craft that lost its connection to mothership the Hermes. Six months later, Catherine's widowed husband Clem Donnelly (James Nesbitt) is now part of a team aboard the research vessel Orpheus, investigating micro-organisms that could hold the key to the world's energy crisis. A crew that consists of the usual clichés: tough captain Frances Kelly (Minnie Driver), hunky marine biologist Samson Ungliss (Goran Visnjic), sweet physicist Svetlana (Vera Filatova), geeky volcanologist Vincent (Sacha Dhawan) and inexperienced student Maddy (Antonia Thomas). The Orpheus's crew are also joined by salvage expert Raymond (Tobias Menzies), who wants to use their ship to retrieve the Hermes's black-box recorder from the sea-bed.

It's an aquatic Event Horizon, then. A standard Hollywood template applied to a BBC-budgeted miniseries, with all the hamfistedness that still implies. Characters don't grow beyond their introductory labels, which undermined the flurry of activity in the final moments when developments relied on the audience caring that Frances is having a secret affair with Samson, or that the most personable crewmember gets murdered. Considering how the core triumvirate of actors are of a decent standard, it was unfortunate that Driver (following Alex Kingston's career trajectory) and Visnjic were given nothing to work with, and Nesbitt's talent was only stretched to weeping over a pebble his daughter Scarlet (Molly Jones) gave him.

Minnie Driver drives the mini-sub

Most of the blame rests with Simon Donald's script, which was almost comically prone to exposition. Clem was introduced walking along the beach with his moppet daughter, inexplicably telling her about a very important rule regarding no communication with the surface once a dive begins. Is this the kind of thing a father talks to their child about? Maybe, maybe not, but thank goodness he did because within thirty minutes Samson's wife contacted the Orpheus just as it was about to submerge.

At other times, characters would recite explanations or dispense facts for the benefit of the audience. A certain degree of hand-holding is required with dramas taking place in a world outside most people's experience, so I could let these moments slide, but it might have been wiser to have included an uninformed character to act as the audience proxy. As it was, it often felt like the characters just enjoyed patronizing each other about what hydrothermal vents are, or that they're breathing a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen.

The saving grace of "To The Furthest Place" (that will hopefully be a turning point for the series), were decent action sequences toying with disaster; with history repeating itself as Samson became trapped in a snared submersible below the Orpheus, prompting a dangerous Thunderbirds-esque rescue between boiling vents that resulted in a crash to the ocean floor and the arrival of an enormous deep-sea craft. The fact the greater mystery of The Deep might not involve a passé sea monster, but instead involve something man-made, is actually quite refreshing.

The Deep's storyline could go a number of ways now, and might still involve a giant squid at some point (can they avoid that temptation?), but the possibility something plausible is behind the Hermes's disappearance is more interesting to me. Is Catherine alive aboard that mysterious ship? Who owns and operates said vessel, and why are they so interested in the Elysian hydrothermal vents? Is it anything to do with Frances's theory that all life on the planet started there? Was the international exclusion zone around this area enforced because there's something dangerous lurking in the deep?

Overall, I can't say I really liked this episode, despite the fact it perked up in the final act, but there is potential the next four episodes might seize upon. If the mystery becomes more involving (with a clever explanation), and the characters develop now they're stuck undersea together in a confined space, The Deep has a chance of capturing some of the magic I think it's aiming for as a smallscreen mix of The Abyss, Sunshine and Sphere.

Asides

• There are familiar faces beyond the three leads that you may recognize: Antonia Thomas (Misfits), Tobias Menzies (Rome), Orla Brady (Mistresses, Fringe), Vera Filatova (the Russian émigré from Peep Show's sixth series) and Molly Jones (the little girl from Being Human series 2).
• Hermes and Orpheus are obviously named after Gods in Greek mythology, but is LURCH named after The Addams Family's manservant?

WRITER: Simon Donald
DIRECTOR: Jim O'Hanlon
CAST: James Nesbitt, Minnie Driver, Goran Visnjic, Orla Brady, Sinead Cusack, Sacha Dhawan, Vera Filatova, Tobias Menzies, Antonia Thomas, Nicholas Pinnock, Molly Jones, Shonagh Price, Ron Donachie, Nigel Whitmey & Dan Li
TRANSMISSION: 3 August 2010 - BBC1/HD, 9PM

moreless