'Flesh & Blood' Episode 1 Recap
PBS' latest series, Flesh & Blood, opens in what looks to be the aftermath of a terrible accident. A house on the beach in the dark, rain and blood on the stones below, broken glass, perhaps a broken balcony, flashing lights from police cars, emergency responders trundling what looks to be a body away. And a voice, Mary (Imelda Staunton), telling the story of her next-door neighbors. She seems quite familiar with them all, not just the widowed wife, Vivian (Francesca Annis), who has lived next door for 40 years. She also knows her three now-grown children, Helen (Claudie Blakley), Jake (Russell Tovey), and Natalie (Lydia Leonard), and the new love in Vivian's life, Mark (Stephen Rea).
Mary: I should have known; a woman like Vivian wouldn't be single for five minutes.
As the curtain pulls back, viewers realize Mary is not narrating this for her health. Two policemen are in her living room, D.I. Doug Lineham (David Bamber) and P.C. Isaac Cory (Karen Gill). She's gleefully regaling them with all this gossip, thew saga of those next door as she serves tea, delighted, for once to be the center of attention and full of unnecessary detail.
