A cast and a half go under water for the BBC
The Deep
Episode 1: To the Furthest Place
BBC One, Tuesday 3rd August, 9pm
Rating: 
“Something’s coming over me, there’s something above me, it’s huge, can someone hear me? God it’s coming back again, it’s coming back over me … Oh God it’s swallowing me up.”
No, it’s not the soundtrack to a skin flick, these were the last words recorded by Dr Catherine Donnelly on her deep diving mission to investigate new sources of energy in hydrothermal vent fields – she, and the crew of her submarine Hermes were never heard of again.
Six months later, her husband Clem (James Nesbitt) is returning to the ocean deep. Captained by Frances (Minnie Driver),Orpheus is off to finish the work Catherine started – but the last minute arrival of Raymond (Tobias Menzies) throws the cat amongst the pigeons as the crew discover that they first must recover the black box recorder from Hermes.
Now things aboard Hermes are rather tense for several reasons. Firstly there’s Clem – he keeps having flashbacks of his dead wife, and popping down to seabed where she met her maker isn’t really helping things. Elsewhere, Frances has been involved in extra-marital relations with Samson (Goran Visnjic) a marine biologist with more than just an eye for crustaceans. Now that’s all very well you might think, but when Sampson gets in trouble, will Frances’s judgement be clouded by her personal feelings, ultimately jeopardising the safety of her ship and crew?
However, the most tension on board the ship is being created by Raymond. He was a last minute addition to the crew and claimed to be a salvage investigator. Pretty soon it transpires that Ray knows a lot more about the mysterious problems around these hydrothermal vents than he was first letting on. Members of the crew are becoming anxious, who is Raymond and who does he work for ? But don’t ask too many questions, people have a habit of dying around our beloved Ray.
Now deep below the Arctic Ocean, the crew are out of radio contact with the surface. Any problems they encounter from here on in, they’ll have to sort out themselves, or die trying. The logline should have been: “In the deep, no one can hear you drown” … but it wasn’t.
In essence The Deep is a bit of a mash-up of ideas, driven by a lust to imitate anything vaguely Doctor Who-esque and deliver a sure fire ratings winner. It’s a bit like Alien underwater with a bit of Star Trek thrown in, a sprinkling of Jaws, a smidgen of Lost and a touch of Cold Feet on the side.
It wants to be a serious drama, but there are a lot of things that detract from it achieving its goals.
