The ‘just about perfect’ season one was a tough act to follow, but the new season of Sherwood pulls it off.
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When it comes to British drama, there’s no shortage of high quality, award-winning shows to choose from. Whether it’s Happy Valley, Broadchurch, Line of Duty, Peaky Blinders or Sherlock, these shows set the bar high by pulling in viewers around the world with their rich, complex characters, gripping storylines and intriguing twists. It’s TV you know won’t let you down, and two years ago, we added a new classic to the list: BBC drama Sherwood.
Created and written by James Graham (The Crown, Quiz, Brexit: The Uncommon War), the BAFTA-award winning first season of Sherwood was hailed by critics as the cleverest, most compelling show in years, and “just about perfect”. The show was inspired by two real murders in an ex-mining village in Nottinghamshire, England, where old resentments from the 1980s miners strikes simmered under the surface. Season one pulsed with a strong sense of time and place, as the search for a killer uncovered a working-class community still suffering from the decisions of its government decades earlier.
Now there’s another murder to solve in Sherwood, with season two premiering on TVNZ+ and TVNZ1 this Sunday. This time, the story was inspired by an era of fierce gun crime and gang violence that caused Nottingham to be nicknamed “Shottingham”. Some familiar characters return, including Detective Ian St Clair (David Morrisey), Daphne Sparrow (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Julie Jackson (the always brilliant Lesley Manville). There are also several new characters, played by experienced actors like Monica Dolan (Mr Bates and The Post Office), David Harewood (Homeland), and Robert Lindsay (My Family).
While season one of Sherwood felt gritty and steeped in political history, season two feels harsher and more contemporary. Detective St Clair has retired from policing, but when a murder threatens to reignite local gang tensions, he becomes involved in the case. The possibility of reopening the coal mines has the progressive new sheriff of Nottingham (The Power’s Ria Zmitrowicz) butting heads with a millionaire businessman (Lindsay). Then, of course, there’s the murder: a brutal, sudden affair that unites two well-known crime families in their quest for revenge.
Episode one sets out the many tangled strands of the story. Talk of a new mine hits a nerve with those who endured the strikes and closures under Thatcher, and who now live with the consequences of those decisions: unemployment, crime, societal breakdown. There’s more family secrets and complicated relationships to unravel. Although Sherwood is set on the other side of the world, it raises timely issues that will resonate here, like a government turning away from sustainable energy to mine fossil fuels, and families destroyed by crime and poverty.
Nottingham is famous for the story of Robin Hood, but Sherwood reminds us that outlaws still rule the city, many of them hiding in plain sight. Season one was a tough act to follow, but episode one of the new season reveals a richly layered piece of television that is a must-watch for British drama fans. Sherwood is a social and political drama as much as it is a murder mystery, one that takes the fractured mess of everyday society and holds a mirror up to it to ask: if this is what we have done to ourselves, where do we go from here?
Sherwood screens on TVNZ1 on Sunday at 8.30pm and streams on TVNZ+.