On paper The Red King sounded right up my alley. Shades of The Wicker Man (police officer on a remote island, missing child, local pagan history, a secret cult) and, of all things, Hot Fuzz (police officer sent from the city to somewhere rural as a “punishment”, trying to fit in with the locals, not understanding the local traditions, another secret cult).
In reality The Red King sadly fell very short of both of the above.
I briefly saw an advert for it before it came out and thought it looked interesting, and once released it appeared to be getting good reviews. It also kept cropping up in groups I’m part of on various social media, so I took the plunge and got a Now TV subscription and binged the series across a few nights. And I’ll be honest, I was very disappointed.
There’s a great cast in there, with some familiar faces, Adjoa Andoh (The Witcher, Bridgerton amongst many credits), Mark Lewis Jones (Star Wars, Game Of Thrones and the amazing Chernobyl) for example, but I’m not sure if it’s the script of the direction, but both actors feel like they are in a different show than the other cast members. Sometimes it was almost verging on a spoof or parody, but without actually being funny.
I stuck with it to the end, hoping the pay off involving the cult would be worth it, but (spoiler alert)… it wasn’t. The ending was hilariously ridiculous, but not in a burning a man alive or kicking a granny in the face kind of way. And that island needs better health and safety laws regarding WW2 bunkers and old mine shafts.
Somewhere in there was a great idea, but if you want to watch something about a police officer dealing with a pagan cult then stick to The Wicker Man (or even Hot Fuzz), rather than something that felt like a Channel 5 daytime drama with swearing.