Maryland is an ITV drama production, broadcast on three consecutive evenings on ITV and now streaming on itvX. A ‘long-form narrative’ comprising 3 x 46 mins episodes, what the US industry might describe as a ‘mini-series’, is interesting for several reasons. First, it appears to have been made as a project initiated by Suranne Jones, one of the most popular UK TV stars (of Gentleman Jack most recently). Secondly it is presented as the work of several women. Jones is joined by Eve Best in the lead pairing. The script is by Anne-Marie O’Connor with Jones contributing and the director is Susan Tully, who began her career in the top soaps Grange Hill and East Enders. There is a host of executive producers, all women, and women in other significant production roles. The story itself is about two sisters who have grown apart over a long period and who come together when their mother Mary is found to have died in mysterious circumstances.
The initial promotion of the programme suggested a mystery and a connection to ITV’s crime fiction strand in the 9pm slot. This turns out to be slightly misleading. Certainly the mother’s death involves a mystery – what was she doing on a beach on the Isle of Man when her daughter Becca (Suranne Jones) thought she was with a friend on holiday in Wales? But actually her death leads not towards a criminal investigation (or at least not in this narrative) but more towards a drama about the impact of her death on the family and especially on the two sisters. Becca has lived all her life in Manchester and has two daughters herself with her husband Jimmy. She has supported her parents whereas her older sister Rosaline (Eve Best) moved to London after university. It isn’t clear what Rosaline does for a living but she seems to be a freelance – a lawyer, a business woman? The father is played by George Costigan, almost unrecognisable from his role in Happy Valley.
The two sisters eventually meet a small group of people on the Isle of Man and discover that their mother has led a secret life of sorts for some time, visiting the island when her family thought she was with her women friends on short breaks. Soon we realise, however, that the real drama is the relationship between the sisters and their re-appraisal of their mother, discovering things that make them reflect on their lives as women from a fairly typical Northern English family. Suranne Jones is well known for a series of TV narratives set in communities around Manchester. Early in her career she appeared in the ultimate Salford saga, the soap Coronation Street and later she was co-lead in the five series of female cop duo Scott + Bailey written by Sally Wainwright. By contrast, Eve Best is a Londoner and a celebrated international stage actor. I think this clear difference in background for the two leads works well as they play off against each other. For me the pleasure in the programme was in a sibling relationship I recognised in a Northern family that rings true.
The narrative is quite conventional beneath a surface layer of more unusual features. I don’t want to spoil the mystery so I’ll stick to the familiar elements of this kind of drama. Certain procedures are different on the Isle of Man compared to the UK mainland and this is something the script uses. So we get to see landscapes of forests and lakes, shoreline and holiday homes but also a karaoke bar. The sisters have separate nighttime flings to relieve the tension as they need to stay on the island for the the autopsy – long enough in fact to allow the rest of the concerned family to make the trip over the Irish Sea to see what’s going on.
Ironically though, the film was shot in Ireland around Bray and Dublin Bay. I presume that the reasons for this were financial in terms of the extensive state support for film and TV production in Ireland. Maryland was made by Monumental Television an independent company in which ITV has a majority stake. Other companies such as TXTV, makers of Innocent (2018-2021), also an ITV show, have also shot in Ireland. Monumental Television is now known as an ‘ITV Label’ company, one of many operating under the ITV banner in what is a major international production slate.
Maryland has had generally good reviews in the UK press. It is interesting to see the contrast between the promotion of the drama as ‘exciting’ in the previews and then described as ‘muted’ after its screening. I think there is a sense that this mini-series is pitched somewhere between the intensity of what used to be termed ‘the single play’ and both the drama series and serial. This is as much about how it is pitched to the audience as it is about the format itself. My feeling is that this was much more successful as a ‘showcase’ for Suranne Jones than the BBC’s Marriage with Nicola Walker and Sean Bean last year. Even so, I’m not sure that it was strong enough to sustain three episodes stripped in this way. This is one of the problems with drama originating in a broadcast context – it means that programme ‘slots’ govern the length rather than settling onthe appropriate length fiven the narrative.
The importance of the narrative, however, is its presentation of a dramatic situation that affects many of us as we grow older. What do we know and what do we understand about our parents? What were they like as young people, what are they thinking as they approach the end of their lives? In terms of popular television this mini-series is also refreshing, offering us a serious drama about siblings, mother and daughters and the contemporary Northern family. It’s encouraging that it can leave out the trappings of popular TV genres and still keep its audience. In the week of 22 May to 28 May, Maryland was the second most watched programme on UK TV (BARB figures), beaten only by Britain’s Got Talent. It’s true that the audience numbers did drop across the three episodes. This is not unusual but does perhaps indicate that parts of the audience were frustrated when it didn’t deliver the expected genre elements. But even so, each episode was watched by 5 million viewers. Reason enough for ITV to commission similar dramas I think.
itp Global Film 