Welcome back to Requiem! Last time we only got one tiny little bitty scene with Brendan Coyle, let’s all cross our fingers for more, shall we? Rolling S1:E05 Bessie after the break.
Quick recap of the past four episodes: young musician Matilda Gray watches her mother commit suicide after acting oddly, then follows some pictures and information found in her mother’s effects to a small town in Wales. A child, Carys Howell, disappeared from there several years ago and was never found. Matilda comes to think SHE is Carys Howell and tortures the entire town looking for evidence, including driving her possible birthmum to a suicide attempt AND maybe causing a fatal stroke for a helpful elderly lady.
In the middle is Nick Dean, love interest for Matilda (called Tilly) whose uncle committed suicide at the same time as Tilly’s mum, leaving Nick his grand castle. That’s where Tilly thinks she was kept as Carys and where she intends to stay, while driving all around her mad with her screaming randomly at bushes and waking up stoned off her arse with marks around her neck. There may be supernatural entities at work, but we can’t tell for sure yet. That’s half the fun, innit?
And now to it!
We open 4 Weeks Earlier with Sylvia Walsh (Tara Fitzgerald) making a lovely lunch for herself, a bird slamming up against her patio door startles her. The TV turns itself on to an interview with our Matilda “Tilly” Gray (Lydia Wilson) who doesn’t play music to sell tickets but rather to get the music out. It’s in her.
Sylvia picks up the phone: “I’ve found her.”
Roll credits! Hey, didn’t Janice, Tilly’s mum get a call right before she killed herself? Did Nick’s uncle?
We’re back at the Dean castle with Tilly photographing the eerie wall of flowers in the basement and peering myopically at mirrors.
Oooh, dishy Nick Dean (James Frencheville) hasn’t booked it to Australia yet after all, he interrupts to tell her that her (maybe) brother David (Brochan Evans) and former DI Stephen Kendrick (Brendan Coyle – totally gasped) are here to see her.
Stephen isn’t impressed by the drawings.
But eventually agrees to talk to a muckety muck about opening up a review.
Tilly doesn’t know why Nick hasn’t gone to Aus either!
Last episode we met Laura (Anastasia Hille) who heard a voice in her head named Bessie, who drew a picture that looked exactly like what Tilly was photographing in the basement.
TILLY ASKED A PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIC TO GO OFF HER MEDS. SO SHE CAN TALK TO ONE OF HER VOICES.
In another puzzling turn, Tilly’s bestie Hal Fine (Joel Fry) is hanging about town, but not with Tilly or helping her investigation, but rather discussing music with barmaid and Carys Howell friend Trudy Franken (Sian Reese-Williams).
Hal gets a call, the woman who sent Tilly her birth certificate is wondering why she didn’t hear back. We never did find out what it said, just that Tilly smashed her expensive cello after and woke up in Nick’s bed all groggy and bruised. And not in the fun way, either.
So now that Tilly has convinced Laura with the history of mental health imbalance to go off her meds, she’s dragged her off to the room Bessie described as some sort of medium exercise. Laura indeed does get some vibes, a man locked Carys in the room and then died there. Nick’s uncle jumped off the roof, so it wasn’t him.
For the first time, Hal is genuinely shocked.
He confronts Tilly, who is watching Laura wander around the spooky garden like some kind of angel diviner. When was she going to tell him that her birth certificate was totally legit? Tilly brushes it off, pfft, totally a fake, but it LOOKS real. You know, you could probably call that real hospital, or real doctor, he could even run a real DNA test!
I’M JUST SAYING
Oh no. Hal is in love with Tilly. But they were joking about all her one-night-stands in the beginning! What makes a guy do that? Okay, I know that answer, I’ve been Hal: “hahahaha tell me more about all your dating women that aren’t me, I’m FASCINATED and totally not drinking while crying the rest of the night BY MYSELF.” One time it took me two years, countless one-night-stands and three girlfriends before I realised that my “friend” wasn’t working up the nerve to ask me out.
She accuses him of riding on her coattails musically and he stalks off to finish this for her. What does that mean??
PC Graves (Clare Calbraith) gets some completely incomprehensible news from her underling, was it to do with David’s father Aron Morgan (Richard Harrington) driving drunk and attacking Hal? She rushes off.
Laura is fondling expensive decorata; Nick is hella nervous. More so about the vibe in the house, what’s going on, Tilly? She braces Nick, was Sylvia here the night she blacked out or what? Nick is adorably confused.
Time for tea with Laura, who’s moved on from fondling the vases to pocketing valuables and Nick’s had enough. He confronts her, she falls and has a seizure and TILLY DECIDES NOT TO CALL AN AMBULANCE BECAUSE MAYBE LAURA IS IN A TRANCE and can tell her something about Carys.
Nice Dr. Satlow (Pippa Hayworth) comes to collect Laura and hey: don’t contact Laura again, fanks. What with convincing her to go off her meds then refusing to procure immediate treatment, that’s probably a good call all around.
PC Graves is searching the woods for…Aron? She calls for backup as she approaches a building, to be hit across the head by someone who is not Ed Fenton (Dyfan Dwyfor), as he’s out looking for Aron in the dark. She subdues her attacker, is that Aron, then?
Tilly’s decided to forgive Nick! What’s happening to her back?
Hey! That’s the symbol Carys was drawing on the wall!
Nick wakes up later alone, Tilly made a recording of the noises we heard and she’s listening to it on repeat because that is not creepy or weird at all.
Hal’s packing up and taking the midnight train to Georgia, he tells Trudy about her dad fighting with Carys Howell’s mum Rose (Claire Rushbrook), then hugging. Ah. Trudy’s mum was dying of cancer at the time he was shagging Rose on the side. Yikes.
I guess that’s better than what Trudy thought previously, that her dad had kidnapped Carys. Bit of a Sophie’s choice there.
Trudy asks her dad and then explodes in front of everyone at the inn: it was he who pushed her mum over the edge! He who caused her last days to be so painful!
She runs out to the alley to calm herself, to be met by Tilly, who wants her to listen to the recording she made. It’s Welsh for “salt pool” and Trudy can take her there.
Hal’s checking out the birth certificate himself, there was a Ron Gray, but he died 25 years ago in a car accident with his wife and young daughter.
Did someone assume his identity? Hal tries to call Tilly but she’s busy boondogging at the local salt pool. She recognises one of the symbols from the basement drawn on a van and asks one of the vagrants nearby.
Okay, Stan (William Thomas) has a caravan, he’s not a vagrant, he even has a kettle because we’re still in the UK. He asks if this is about the child? All our ears perk up. He found a child’s skeleton, it was dismissed as being a sheep, but there was a bracelet on the skeleton’s wrist and it had that symbol drawn on it. This was three years after Carys disappeared.
Side note: once I finish my debt to society (raising children) and am footloose and fancy free, I want a caravan like that. A kettle and fresh herb plants in the kitchen.
He did report it to the police, but some dodgy personal circumstances led to it being dismissed out of hand by a detective and constable. Stephen Kendrick, I presume. Stan’s made a lovely place for whomever was that skeleton, perhaps Tilly could kick in for some flowers?
Aha! Tilly’s birth certificate was totally faked! And JANICE was the copper on duty when Ron Gray and family were so tragically killed. AHA!
Tilly goes to yell at Stephen and I giffed it ALL
I’m not even sorry
Trudy finds a scared Ed waiting in her room, he and Aron were growing weed, that was the enterprise out in the woods. He explains, but stops when he sees Hal’s bag. Oh wait, he doesn’t care if she’s shagging “that English fella”, he wants to marry her and take her away with him!
Trudy does not want that.
Tilly is trying to make sense of the drawings on the wall in the basement; what if there were two children taken? No offense, but wouldn’t someone have noticed that there were TWO children missing?
Ed finally faces the music and comes in to see PC Graves, who looks like she wants to pat him on the head for his courage. He and Aron were using part of Nick’s uncle’s property. When Ewan Dean died, Ed delayed the call so he could clean up the drugs. Someone helped, who was it?
Was it Stephen? Let’s ask him!
Oh wait, he’s talking to Hal first. Go on, dreamy. Tell us about Tilly.
Now this is interesting, Hal asks about Janice and turns out not only did Stephen know her, she worked under him for a time there in Pennywhatsit. He says she disappeared after some mental instability and also had “made enemies” which seems…higher level than a traffic cop, so we know we can’t take anything he says seriously. Sexy, yes. Truthful: no.
Hal lays out his theory, which Stephen ponders before asking the question we know dooms Hal: has he told anyone else that he thinks Janice stole Carys and the identity of the tragic Gray family? Nope and the timer starts.
It seems Janice was there right after Carys went missing, it all fits. Hal is off to find Tilly, I hope he makes it, those wee Welsh roads look crazy and he seems dopey. He is listening to Billie Holliday (mine and Trudy’s favourite!), though, so there are worse ways to go. There’s those creepy noises again, and a weird flash in his rearview, maybe slow down, sailor! I’m quite attached to Hal with the almost-beard.
Yeah he flips.
COME ON.
Tilly’s tracked down the bear found in the basement, they’re made locally and the type are for sale at a newsagent. The chatty storekeeper tells Tilly about a young lad who had one just like that, he went into care, maybe, said Dr. Satlow and her husband Lloyd (Simon Kunz) and now we know who was in the woods and the basement with Carys. The lovely shopkeeper wants to sterilize all the “dirty druggies” so you just can’t tell where Hitler lurks, can you?
The kiddo that went missing was from a poor, drugs-laden family, I probably shouldn’t be surprised that Carys’s disappearance got that much more notice.
Graves calls: Tilly is off to the scene. I hope Hal is okay!
Awww man, Hal is not okay. He’s gone
Oh wait!! Not dead gone, but gone as is left the scene!! Yay! I think!
Huh. Lloyd is over at Sylvia’s house, he’s already heard about Hal. Hey! It’s he and Sylvia who are calling the angels! And they’re gonna use Davey to do it!! After feeding him many cookies and slipping on a weird bracelet.
Jaysus.
I’m not going to tell you your business, creepy murdery angel callers, but maybe wait until the heat dies down! And we’re out.
Well. That advanced rather quickly all at once, didn’t it? We know Tilly is very much likely Carys after all, Stephen Kendrick is an adorably compromised copper and Lloyd probably murdered Meredith, the elderly lady at the beginning. Until next time!
