Acorn TV's 'The Drowning' is a Melodramatic Wash-Out
The Drowning is a four-part drama currently available on AcornTV and Sundance Now. It originally aired on BBC’s Channel 5 and its cast is full of familiar faces, including Jill Halfpenny and Rupert Penry-Jones.
Written by Tim Dynevor, Francesca Brill, and Luke Watson, and directed by Carolina Giammetta, it has the promise and pedigree of a competent, watchable series. But The Drowning is entirely too derivative of both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the dysfunctional family, the missing child) or The Missing without the emotional punch of either. Halfpenny’s intense performance as Jodie will keep you watching, while you alternately smack or shake your head, and resign yourself to the next plot hole or bit of silliness. And there are a lot of them.
Jodie is a woman who’s suffered a tragedy in her life - on a family picnic to a lake, her four-year-old son Tom disappears. She and her family are devastated, the police do their best, including sending divers into the lake, but Tom is never found. Jodie and her husband Ben (Dara Devaney) divorce and he marries her former best friend Kate (Deirdre Mullins).
