Under Salt Marsh review – Rafe Spall’s thrilling Welsh crime drama is clever, gripping TV
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jan/30/under-salt-marsh-review-jonathan-pryce-sky-atlantic-nowThis carefully plotted tale of the investigation into a small boy’s death is a compelling, psychologically astute watch – which constantly pulls the rug out from under you
By ’eck – it’s grim out west. Such is the overriding impression wrought by Under Salt Marsh, a six-part crime drama set in the fictional Welsh town of Morfa Halen. As the title suggests, the town sits alongside the treacherously boggy lands, under lowering skies and just, but only just, above rising sea levels. The latter is threatening to make the defences the inhabitants are struggling to build obsolete. A huge storm is thought to be approaching and emergency evacuation warnings readied. Think of the place as a conservation area for the pathetic fallacy. There is a lot of actual and metaphorical gloom about. Much of it is attached to local primary school teacher Jackie Ellis (Kelly Reilly). Already bowed under the weight of her nine-year-old niece Nessa’s (Amara Atwal) disappearance three years ago, she finds the body of one of her pupils, Cefin, as she walks home across the marshes one night. The child has apparently drowned in a drainage ditch.
When detective Eric Bull (Rafe Spall), who was also involved in Nessa’s case, arrives to investigate the boy’s death, it becomes clear from his and Jackie’s immediate hostility that they have a fraught history – although its precise nature differs slightly from the one audiences have come to expect. It’s a series that is good at subverting expectations at every turn – not least in its delicate evocation of grief and the manifold ways a landscape can affect its people. Morfa Halen’s townsfolk are hardy and self-reliant, qualities born of their environment and isolation. But the drama poses the question of whether such independence serves a person or a community equally well under more extreme circumstances – be they meteorological or emotional – or whether a community can implode under the strain.
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