A gruesome death stokes up distrust on the ill-fated Volunteer.
The writer-director of dark period drama The North Water has teased that no one aboard its grim whaling ship is a hero, after one crew member mysteriously turns up dead.
Set in the 1850s, the series unfolds primarily from the perspective of disgraced military surgeon Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell), who gets more than he bargained for after accepting a job on The Volunteer.
In tonight’s episode of The North Water, Summer is horrified to discover that vulnerable cabin boy Joseph Hannah (Stephen McMillan) has been sexually assaulted by someone aboard the ship.
Refusing to name his attacker out of fear, he later turns up dead inside an oil barrel having been strangled, with the killer still at large somewhere on the boat as it ventures further and further away from civilisation.
There are no shortage of suspects who could be responsible for the despicable crime, as The North Water writer-director Andrew Haigh teases in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.
“In many ways, you imagine this is a story about a hero that finds redemption and of course it isn’t that at all,” he explained. “It’s about a bunch of men and none of them are heroes, and actually it becomes about pure survival, more than it becomes about some search for redemption.”
While Colin Farrell’s barbaric harpooner Henry Drax is likely to top the list of potential culprits for many viewers, there is also uncertainty over the captain’s right-hand man Michael Cavendish (Sam Spruell), who Hannah seems terrified by in a grilling before his death.
There’s also the small matter of Drax’s claim that he saw ship carpenter McKendrick making advances on Hannah days earlier, but there’s understandable doubt over whether his testimony can be trusted.
Haigh added: “They’re not on some grand mission to discover the northwest passage, they’re not hunting for the biggest whale in the sea. This is about a bunch of working men on a ship and I think that’s quite different… historical drama is not usually about those people.”
Additional reporting by Jo Berry.
The North Water continues tonight at 9:30pm on BBC Two. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.