Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Granite Harbour’ On BritBox, Where A Rookie Detective Keeps Getting Very Involved In His First Case

How many variations of TV police detective are there? Apparently, they’re infinite; take someone in any situation, give them a badge, and have them solve a case. But when the case and the cops around the main character are generic, then what was the point of giving the main detective a unique perspective? That’s the question we asked when we watched Granite Harbour.

GRANITE HARBOUR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man in a military uniform is sleeping on a parked bus. The driver wakes him up and jokes, “If you stay any longer, you’ll have to buy another ticket.”

The Gist: Sergeant Davis Lindo (Romario Simpson), who has spent a decade in the Royal Military Police in Jamaica, reports for detective training duty in Aberdeen Scotland. Actually, he’s supposed to be there the following Monday, but he wanted to introduce himself to his boss, DCI MacMillan (Dawn Steele). He’s part of a program called DUO, that pairs people in the Commonwealth military forces with jobs in emergency services in the UK. He also meets his training officer, DS Lara Bartlett (Hannah Donaldson).

During his first weekend, shopping for clothes for his new job, he sees a public rally by a traditional oil company announcing its merger with a Scandinavian green energy company. He sees the president of the oil company, Clellan Coburn (Ron Donachie) arguing with someone after the announcement.

After Bartlett shows now-DC Lindo around on the first day, he meets DI Jaiyush Mallick (Bhav Joshi), who immediately resents Lindo’s presence; Mallick got to his position by coming up through the ranks, no small feat for someone of South Asian descent like he was. They’re called to the scene of a body in the woods: It’s Coburn, who was about to sign the merger agreement with Karolina Andersson (Katia Winter), the CEO of the green energy company.

Bartlett and Lindo go to talk to Coburn’s brother Shay (Gary Lewis), a noted opponent of the merger, and Lindo blurts out that he saw Shay and Clellan in an argument after the rally. Of course, this ticks off Bartlett, who explicitly instructed Lindo to just observe.

Suspicion turns to Rory Dashford (Andrew Still) a Coburn employee who was at the rally in protest of the merger, and hurled something at the stage. Lindo chases him down as Bartlett follows in the car, and they bring him in on suspicion of murder. But Lindo knows that Dashford is innocent, and he openly complains that the cops are targeting the working class guy instead of looking at the more influential people like Shay Coburn or Karolina Andersson.

Things get even more dicey when they talk to Isla Breck (Fiona Bell), who provided an alibi for Dashford. When they go back to the pub she owns to get a DNA sample for her, they find out that Andersson had come to see her. When the Bartlett and Lindo follow her and see her wrestled into a van, Lindo takes matters into his own hands.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Any number of police procedurals from the UK, most recently DI Ray.

Our Take: There was a germ of a good idea for Granite Harbour; a young but experienced military police officer into a pretty foreign environment for him as he learns how to be a civilian police detective. He’s treated like a raw rookie when he knows he’s not, and while he has much more advanced instincts and skills than a rookie detective might, he has to unlearn a lot in order to reach his goal of working at New Scotland Yard for the Metropolitan Police.

There could have been explorations of race and of the implications of being in the Royal Army when you’re a citizen of a British commonwealth. Heck, even just seeing Lindo applying military police tactics in a civilian police environment would have been interesting. But what we get with this show is a mostly generic three-part murder mystery, with the brash young cop constantly defying orders until he finds an ally who understands that his instincts have been leading them to breaks in the case.

As usual, the cops around Lindo are more defined in broad strokes than in actual character traits. What we know about Bartlett, for instance, is that she likes wearing jaunty neckercheifs. DCI MacMillan hangs with Aberdeen’s rich and influential. DI Mallick is angry AF. And the tech-oriented DS Simone “Monty” Montrose (Michelle Jeram) cracks jokes. We probably won’t get a more in-depth look at any of them during the series’ other two episodes; they’re only there to be the slight impediment to Lindo as he barrels his way through this case.

The case itself doesn’t seem all that complicated. We know that either the CEO’s anti-green brother, or the green company CEO, who stood to inherit the oil company, are the best suspects. It’s pretty likely one of them did it, and to go in any other direction would require some deft plot gymnastics.

So if the case itself isn’t going to be that complicated, the cops solving it need to be more interesting. And, at least through the first episode, none of them really are.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Lindo tries to pull Isla out of the white van, but she pulls him in instead. The door closes; Bartlett calls the abduction into the station as the van speeds away.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the costume designer who thought that Bartlett would be the type of cop to wear jaunty neckerchiefs, and that Lindo would be able to afford what looks to be some of the sharpest police detective outfits this side of Ron Harris on Barney Miller.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I’m not paid to have an imagination,” Mallick says to Andersson. “I’m paid to find the facts.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. There was so many directions Granite Harbour could have gone in, which is why its generic story and characters are so disappointing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.