The first series of The Devil’s Hour is finely acted by leads Jessica Raine, Nikesh Patel and Peter Capaldi, if a little frustrating in its storytelling
“Something’s just broken and I don’t know how to fix it”
With Season 2 imminently arriving, I finally got round to finishing the first series of The Devil’s Hour this week. I watched the first couple of episodes way back when but it kinda fell off my radar, which is turning into something of a habit for Amazon Prime Video shows for me – too many streaming services! – but two years after it premiered, here we are.
Tom Moran’s show slowly reveals itself as a cross between a pyschological thriller and a supernatural drama but even with just six episodes, it really does do this very slowly indeed. It opens atmospherically: the excellent Jessica Raine plays social worker Lucy Chambers who is struggling with family and marital issues, exacerbated by a killer case of insomnia.
She finds herself waking every night at 3.33am, in the titular devil’s hour, haunted by things she sees – dreams, visions, déjà vu…? Her 8-year-old Isaac is emotionally withdrawn by day and sleepwalking by night. Her estranged husband Mike may still be good for a shag but he doesn’t connect with their son. Her mother talks to empty chairs but has far-reaching sight. When a troublesome case at work goes awry, her name is then connected to the hunt for a serial killer and more kookiness ensues.
There’s a lot at play and the show does a decent job in setting its multiple plates spinning. On top of all of this are ominous conversations with Peter Capaldi’s creepy handcuffed Gideon, these scenes set somewhere in the future, pointing to the likely forward nature of the things that Lucy sees. But as the supernatural nature of events comes more into play, an enduring lack of clarity proves frustrating as, quite frankly, do the late-rushed answers that arrive in an anti-climactic final episode.
Raine is a strong emotive lead and Capaldi glowers efficiently with intrigue, not there’s much for him to do beyond that until much later on. Nikesh Patel as lead investigator DI Ravi Dhillon comes off best, an engaging partnership formed with Alex Ferns’ DS Holness. Meera Syal is good if a little perplexing as a family therapist who constantly talks about Isaac as if he isn’t right there in the room with them, Barbara Marten’s few scenes as Lucy’s mother sparkle brightly and Phil Dunster is an effective piece of counter-casting as an increasingly unlikeable Mike. Overall though, this feels less than essential.
