Graham Norton’s village murder story defies expectations of humorous mystery trailers

The 30-second commercial makes us feel like we’re in a quirky murder mystery comedy set in a West Cork village full of colorful weirdos, set in a fantasy setting, somewhere between Craggy Island, Killinaskully and Spike Milligan’s Puckoon.

The opening moments of the first episode seem to play out up (or down) than expected. Here’s Brenda Fricker as the housekeeper Lizzy Meaney, shuffling around on her mobility scooter, her helmet falling over her head.

She’s on her way to prepare a giant lamb, causing a heart attack for overweight local Garda sergeant PJ Collins (Conleth Hill), who has to unfasten his belt and trousers in order for his breakfast to be acknowledged.

Then we had to give a shout out to the store owner and busy man Eileen O’Driscoll (Pauline McLynn) who politely berated PJ for letting a man crossing the street from her establishment paint the house. His is a sad “gray brown”, as she calls it.

“We want to be a colorful Cork,” she barks.

But these early scenes give way to something more important. There is some comedy in Hold, but it is of the dark kind and is rooted in bitterness, regret, and disappointment.

PJ, a hit from “here and there”, who has been in the village for exactly “three years and 10 months” and whose theme from The Sweeney as his ringtone, considered a joke by the locals.

The trailer features a scene of him sitting in his patrol car, shoveling bread, crisps and slices of processed cheese into his mouth. Taken out of context, it’s like a broad comedy; as part of the larger picture sketched in the opening episode, however, it points to something deeper, sadder, and more bruised. PJ is a fool in love, maybe, but he’s not everyone’s fool.

The other characters, played by a stellar Irish cast, are similarly engaging.

Siobhan McSweeney from Derry Girls is Bríd Riordan, a baker and coffee shop owner with a drink problem, who is stuck in an unhappy marriage with boring Anthony (Gary Shelford).

Living with them and their two children is Bríd’s (Olwen Fouéré) white-haired, nimble mother Kitty, who spends her days drinking whiskey (the bottle obviously doesn’t fall far from the tree) and quips molasses when she dissected many inadequacies. of her son-in-law.

There’s the Ross sisters’ Chekhovian trio: Abigail (Helen Behan), Florence (Amy Conroy) and Evelyn (Charlene McKenna, more convincingly cast there than she is as an unlikely IRA captain in the mix). faltering Peaky Blinders).

Abigail is gay and is heading to San Francisco with her partner and teenage son Stephen (Sky Yang), who regularly has sex with Evelyn in the back of an old ambulance. Abigail, meanwhile, looks like she’s having a secret relationship of her own with liquor man Cormac Byrne (Lochlann Ó Mearáin).

There seem to be quite a few secrets hidden in this small village, and the most explosive of them comes to light – literally – when a construction project excavates the burial of human bones.

What is suspicious is that they are the remains of a local Lothario named Tommy Burke, who was last seen taking a bus out of the village 20 years earlier.

Tommy is engaged to Bríd and defends her on their wedding day. But it looks like he did her dirty work with Evelyn at the same time.

PJ sees this cold case as an opportunity for him to prove himself by discovering which of the villagers is the killer. Unfortunately, his lightning looks like it’s about to be stolen by sly young detective Linus Dunne (Clinton Liberty), who has been sent down from Dublin to take charge of the investigation and, like everyone else, watch PJ is a bit terminated.

Without reading Norton’s book, I don’t know where Hold go from here. But it’s new and special enough to make it worth learning.