After the Flood review: classic police procedural meets climate change drama, with convoluted results

We used to play a game in my household, with the long-running BBC murder drama Silent Witness, where we’d exclaim loudly anytime the protagonists’ investigations took them outside of the usual purview of a forensic pathologist. It resulted in a cacophonous wall of sound that would’ve made Phil Spector put down his trowel. It is, after all, a staple of British TV: the freelancing detective who goes way beyond the scope of their actual job. And the latest version of this can be found in ITV’s new six-part drama, After the Flood.

Sophie Rundle is Jo Marshall, a bobby on the beat who will soon be training as a detective, following in the footsteps of her late father. But she’s also seven months pregnant and struggling to keep up with the demands of the job. When a flash flood rips through the town, it catalyses a series of revelations. Who is the unknown hero who saves a baby from the rising waters? And who is the man found dead, trapped in a submerged lift? “They think he died three days ago,” Jo is told, “before the flood…” In her pursuit of the dead man’s identity, Jo will cross legal and moral boundaries, fighting to solve a mystery before a second flood can hit the town.

The show’s core concept is a striking one. The opening scenes show floodwaters ripping through the streets of a chocolate box Northern town, a collection of hapless coppers chasing the deluge like it’s just escaped from Wandsworth prison. “Where were you when the flood hit?” Jo asks, at one point, which makes the flood sound like an autonomous character with its own motives. It also speaks to the show’s ambitious attempt to marry a John Doe procedural with a climate change drama. As the series progresses, Jo’s investigations unfold in tandem with her mother (Lorraine Ashbourne) attempting to lobby for improved flood defences, with the help of shifty local property developer Jack (Philip Glenister).

As the recent success of ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office has proved, it is perfectly possible for television drama to affect real political change. That Toby Jones-led series has accelerated the injustice perpetrated against the sub-postmasters right up the government’s agenda. And while it is unlikely that the broader brush, fictional approach of After the Flood will have the same impact, there is clearly an aspiration here. Its very title is in conversation with the paradisiacal, antediluvian past that has escaped us; not to mention the Leonardo DiCaprio-narrated climate change documentary, Before the Flood, which looks at how climate denialism infected Washington’s legislative processes and discourse. The vision of After the Flood pits businessmen who see the environmental agencies as “doom merchants”, alongside crummy, corruptible politicians, against civilian activists and local campaigners. It is an attempt to make micro the macro struggle, albeit in a way that lacks much subtlety.

But ITV murder dramas – especially ones involving faked deaths, pan-European conspiracies, and organised crime – are rarely subtle. Rundle is an engaging presence, even if the sight of a pregnant detective is becoming a genre cliché (from Frances MacDormand’s Oscar-winning turn in Fargo, through to Carey Mulligan in Collateral or Da’Vine Joy Randolph in Only Murders in the Building). Her nascent detective, though, rarely manages to keep her head above the rising tides of characterisation, nor do those around her, whether that be her crusading mother, or sceptical husband. “You’re just running around,” he (Matt Stokoe) tells her, “playing at being your dad.” The collision of ecological themes with a classic police procedural might produce some interesting results, but it also adds further confusion to the distinctly muddy waters.

All the same, the visuals of the flooding – which open the series – demonstrate a domestic broadcaster attempting to keep pace with the splendour of American streaming services. The potential for a natural disaster to dredge cold cases is a top premise, but one that could’ve been executed, perhaps, without a reversion to thin world-building, convoluted plotting, and didactic sermonising. What remains is a middle-order cop drama which, unlike the remaining denizens of our drowned world, is really neither fish nor fowl.