Waking the Dead: Laid to Rest

Perhaps it’s hypocritical that, having endlessly complained about the habit of American networks to finish a show before it needs cancelling, with them always happier to wield an axe than some common sense, that I am bemoaning dear old Auntie Beeb’s decision to end a show that has run for over ten years now.

But such is the quality of Waking the Dead. I was greatly saddened to hear that this series would be its last. Sure Dr Eve Lockhart’s spin-off, The Body Farm, offers some comfort, but it’s got big shoes to fill. I freely admit that these shoes do, at times, toe the line of plausibility a little more often than I would like, but it is so well crafted and acted, that I unabashedly excuse its eccentricities, and rate it as one of the BBC’s best shows.

It is lucky, then, that the show was gifted such a fitting conclusion. The final double-bill was one of the show’s darkest ever. Having learnt that he is being forcibly removed from his position running the Cold Case unit, Detective Superintendent Boyd (Trevor Eve) decides that as his last case he wants to tackle the disappearance of sixteen homeless boys from the streets of London in the early 1980s – disappearance that Boyd and his friend, the Reverend Dennis Grant, are adamant were linked. It soon transpires that Boyd’s suspicions are correct, and the team realise that they are hunting a cold-blooded, sadistic serial-killer the likes of which they have rarely seen before.

Whilst the team discovered the cellar where the victims were tortured and killed relatively quickly, Boyd’s troubles were only just beginning. He had to cope not only with the memories that the case stirred of his own son’s disappearance and murder but also with the increasingly suspicious involvement of the high-ranking Assistant Chief Commissioner Tony Nicholson, who seemed to be trying to stop the case from being solved – not to mention the revelation that it was on his colleague Sarah Cavendish’s advice that he was to lose his job.

After Cavendish, eager to make it up to a fuming Boyd, disappeared whilst spying on Nicholson, the stage was set for a chess match of epic proportions. Boyd - brooding, shouting and witness-bashing his way through the investigation - met his match in the ruthless-yet-cunning ACC Nicholson (played just as ably by Paul McGann). The tension between the two mounted tantalising throughout the show, as Boyd tried to prove just how far Nicholson had gone to protect his family’s secrets, whilst Nicholson tried to pin Sarah’s disappearance on the determined detective.

Whilst Trevor Eve was, as always, supported brilliantly by his team of Eve, Spencer and Grace (God, I’m going to miss Grace!) this was ultimately Eve’s show. He threw absolutely everything into his performance, and reminded viewers what an integral part he had played in the show’s brilliant nine series run.

The script allowed him to run riot, as the twisting and turning plot was unapologetically dark and seemingly relentless. When Nicholson finally showed his hand in this epic poker game, revealing Sarah’s dead body planted at Boyd’s house, Eve showed a man with nothing to lose, a man who was going all in. The much-anticipated explosive climax did not disappoint, as a grizzled Boyd proved the victor, and dealt his own brand of rough justice one more time.

And so Waking the Dead was laid to rest. But what a worthy requiem these last episodes provided. Perhaps this last effort showed how much more Waking the Dead had to offer, or perhaps it showed how a show can go with dignity. After all, it is better to burn out than fade away, and this is one show that went out in a blaze of glory.

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