If the end of The Investigation has left a Nordic-noir-shaped hole in your viewing, then Deliver Us (Channel 4) has arrived just in time. This menacing drama takes place in a small town, where a celebratory party ends in tragedy, because this is a Danish series and you can’t so much as look at the pretty countryside without someone bumping you off in a mysterious and gruesome manner.
In this case, it is poor Aksel, who ends up being run over by a truck while cycling home drunkenly after a joyful all-nighter. There is a brief shot of a wolf, looking meaningful and symbolic, which made me wonder if this might turn out to be more like the first series of The Returned. It has some of the same elements: the small-town setting, the close-knit community and the sense of overwhelming claustrophobia.
It turns out not to be so supernatural. Following Aksel’s demise, we jump 18 months into the future. His father, Peter, a doctor, is in a state of grief and despair; he has let the house they lived in fall into disrepair. Peter’s brother, Martin – played by an actor who looks so much like Ricky Wilson that I started to hum I Predict a Riot – returns to the town to look after him.
But Martin has his own troubles and, you start to suspect, his own agenda. He is a womaniser with a string of failed relationships behind him – and he has written a book that depicts the town in a less-than-flattering light. He tells Aksel’s girlfriend, Mia, that it is time to move on, then moves on her, in the front seat of his car. If he is Peter’s sole source of support, then Peter is in trouble.
Deliver Us is a patchwork of people’s suffering. As well as the plight of Peter and Martin, we are introduced to Kasper, a young man recently released from a psychiatric ward into the care of his parents. His regular chicken hallucinations, which are not nearly as fun as they sound, suggest he is nowhere near recovered. His parents, John and Anna, can only try to keep him close (Anna is a long-lost love of Martin’s, which will surely become significant.) Then there is Bibi and Tom, the couple who run the local pub. Their sexless marriage is thwarting Bibi’s desire to become a mother and Tom is acting like a man with a secret.
Mike is the rot at the heart of their small community. He is the Tommy Lee Royce of this particular unhappy valley, a swaggering, remorseless villain who is managing to take a bite out of most of the residents. Everyone seems to fear him, whether physically, psychologically or both. Mike was the driver of the car that hit Aksel; Peter and Mia believe that it was deliberate. It seems likely – although, as we learned from The Investigation, the bar for proof is high in Denmark – and there is not enough evidence that Mike’s actions were intentional.
Instead of being brought to justice, he terrorises the town, punching, blackmailing and torturing the residents. At a town festival, Peter rails against the fact that Mike is free, arguing, publicly and loudly, that, if this were 100 years ago, the town would have killed him and solved all of their problems.
Slowly – this being a Danish drama, it makes no attempt to zip through the action – an idea begins to take shape. The people bullied and tormented most by Mike are united by their fear and loathing of him. Quietly and privately, they begin to discuss the unthinkable. If Mike is beyond the law, what do they have to do to get rid of him? Could they take matters into their own hands? Could they get away with murder? Do they want to? I read that there was some dark humour in this series. Perhaps it arrives later; this first episode is as bleak as they come.
Deliver Us is familiar in parts, but the premise is strong, even if we have seen much like it before. The plot is appealingly knotty, with plenty of characters to weave in and out of the story, and it has a decent grasp of small-town dynamics that transcends its setting. A setting that is – naturally, reliably – grim.
