Series 2 of Waking the Dead sees the show settling into a predictable routine perhaps just a little too easily and too soon
“She knows the truth, that what matters”
I didn’t mind Series 2 of Waking the Dead but I was surprised at how quickly and rigidly the show sticks to its formula, making the season not necessarily the most engaging. The biggest challenge actually comes in the ways that the show tries to justify these cases really being cold cases, when the team’s investigations so often lead to someone else dying which would surely make it an active case?!
But for the most part, we get Trevor Eve’s Boyd being a real twat (more so than I ever remembered), Sue Johnston’s Grace an all-knowing sage, Wil Johnson and Claire Goose as competent cops doing the legwork and Holly Aird’s Frankie an absolute master of her craft as she constantly delivers the goods in examining bodies, evidence, crime scenes and a lot more besides.
Top guest appearances
- Brilliant casting puts the lovely Samuel West in the role of serial killer Thomas Rice in ‘Life Sentence’ and he is malevolently glorious
- Ronald Pickup’s thoroughly old-school gangster is a chilling delight too in ‘Deathwatch’
- Now forever Miranda-ised, ‘Special Relationship’ offers a great opportunity to see how good an actress Patricia Hodge is as the rather icy Lady Alice
- In the same episode, Kika Markham is a scene-stealing wonder as no-nonsense receptionist Ann
- And in ‘Thin Air’, Cherie Lunghi and Roger Allam pair up well as long-grieving parents the Golds, each dealing very differently with their crises
