{"id":54704,"date":"2024-07-12T12:10:23","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T10:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=2070175"},"modified":"2024-07-12T13:04:59","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T11:04:59","slug":"the-jetty-review-jenna-colemans-crime-drama-has-a-fire-in-its-belly","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/the-jetty-review-jenna-colemans-crime-drama-has-a-fire-in-its-belly\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jetty review: Jenna Coleman\u2019s crime drama has a fire in its belly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cat Jones’s BBC four-parter explores the destabilising impact of sexual abuse in a northern lakeside town. <\/p>

By Abby Robinson\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 12 July 2024 at 10:10 AM<\/p>

\n\n
<\/div> 3.0 out of 5 star rating<\/span> <\/span> <\/div> <\/div>

It was sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke who first coined the phrase Me Too, all the way back in 2006, but it was Alyssa Milano\u2019s 2017 tweet<\/a> that opened the floodgates for a cultural reckoning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote \u2018Me Too\u2019 as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem,\u201d the actor wrote following an allegation from her Charmed co-star Rose McGowan that she had been raped by <\/span>Harvey Weinstein.<\/span><\/p>\n

Milano herself commented \u2018Me Too\u2019, and nine days on, the hashtag had been used in more than 1.7 million tweets from 85 different countries, according to The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Change was in the air, or so it seemed. Finally, finally<\/em>, justice would be done and the balance would be readdressed, <\/span>at least that\u2019s how it felt at that moment in time.<\/p>\n

But while Weinstein was subsequently imprisoned in the wake of Me Too, as were several other high-profile men, in April this year the movie mogul\u2019s rape conviction was overturned<\/a>, and <\/span>violence against women and girls remains endemic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter The Jetty<\/a>, a four-part BBC drama about one northern English town\u2019s own post-Me Too reckoning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jenna\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
Jenna Coleman as Ember in The Jetty.<\/span><\/figcaption> Firebird Pictures, Ben Blackall<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

Jenna Coleman leads the cast as Ember Manning, a detective who is tasked with investigating a fire at a boat hut. The property, which used to belong to her husband before his death a year ago, is being renovated by an out-of-towner hoping to make a hefty profit.<\/p>\n

But that encroachment ruffled local feathers, leading to threats and possibly arson, if that theory proves to be correct.<\/p>\n

Yet this isn\u2019t a series about gentrification.<\/p>\n

While Ember is tucking into a portion of chips on her lunch break, she clocks an altercation between local arsehole Liam (Arthur Hughes)<\/span> and true crime podcaster Riz (Weruche Opia), who has just arrived on the scene and is carrying out an investigation of her own.<\/p>\n

Riz\u2019s speciality is crimes against women and girls, and her latest focus is Amy Knightley (<\/span>Bo Bragason). <\/span>The teenage girl <\/span>vanished from the town 17 years ago and hasn\u2019t been seen since, her memory taking on a ghostly quality that begins to haunt the community once again as fresh facts come to light.<\/p>\n

Did the wayward and precocious Amy leave to travel the world, as she often vowed to do, ticking off the countries on the posters tacked to her bedroom ceiling? Or did someone silence her \u2013 and is the guilty party still here, lurking in plain sight?<\/p>\n

Prior to her disappearance, she was sexually involved with someone who should have been old enough to know better, and Riz also has evidence that there are other underage girls who are being sexually abused and exploited by men in a town whose beauty, while undeniable, cannot offset the rot that has been allowed to fester \u2013 both by those doing the harming, and by those who have always known the ugly truth, but have repeatedly chosen to turn a blind eye.<\/p>\n

\"Bo\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
Bo Bragason as Amy in The Jetty.<\/span><\/figcaption> Firebird Pictures\/Ben Blackall<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

As Ember sets about trying to establish how the three separate cases are linked, she\u2019s forced to reevaluate her own life, particularly her relationship with her late husband, who was also old enough to have known better when he first laid eyes on her.<\/p>\n

Her love for him never wavers, but over the course of the series, she does come to accept that he took advantage of her blindspots, an unavoidable consequence of her youth.<\/p>\n

That painful realisation also impacts Ember\u2019s Gilmore Girls-esque relationship with her teenage daughter, who she had when she was just 17.<\/p>\n

Hannah (Ruby Stokes) is a smart, confident young woman with a strong sense of self, having been raised that way by her mum, but even that\u2019s not enough to insulate her from what it means to exist as a woman in a world in which her kind are so often viewed as a commodity.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n