Ragdoll – Premiere Review
Last week I attended a screening of the series premiere of Ragdoll, a brand new 6-part crime thriller airing soon on Alibi/AMC. And boy am I glad I went. Ragdoll needs to be on your watchlist!
Loved the themed popcorn for the screening – Police Car-amel Cop-corn indeed!
This Ragdoll premiere review will contain some mild spoilers.
Synopsis
A gruesome discovery sets DI Baxter (Thalissa Teixeira), DS Rose (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) and DC Edmunds (Lucy Hale) on the trail of the Ragdoll killer, who also lists six more people due to die; it’s a race against time to find the victims and track down a killer before he strikes again.
Ragdoll – Premiere Review
I am partial to the odd crime drama, and the trailer and synopsis for Ragdoll really caught my attention. There are apparently some changes from the book (which is now firmly on my TBR), notably the name of one of the detectives, and a pivotal plot point from later in the book is revealed in the first episode of the show as it heightens the tension. And that’s something this show has in spades, at least if the premiere is anything to go by. The cold open alone had my heart racing. I’m not sure I took a full breath until the opening credits rolled.
The intense opening follows DS Nathan Rose in pursuit of a serial killer known as the Cremation Killer, who sets his victims on fire. Lloyd-Hughes does a spectacular job in the initial flashback scenes, without speaking a word, of portraying the intensity of the emotions that lead to a violent breakdown, and ongoing treatment for PTSD.
The discovery of the crime scene that comes to be known as The Ragdoll was really well done. An awful lot of the horror is revealed through the reactions of the three detectives before you actually see what they are seeing. During an interview after the screening, Lloyd-Hughes mentioned he’s a huge fan of The X-Files, and joked that when the three detectives were playing their torch beams over the area he was channelling Fox Mulder. It definitely had a creepy vibe, even more so when the actual Ragdoll is revealed. The “body” was posed was incredibly well done, it reminded me of macabre take on The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel.
I absolutely loved the three very different detectives on the case and their interactions. Rose has been through hell over the last couple of years and a lesser story would have probably made him an alcoholic to hide his problems. Ragdoll does a great job of subverting your expectations – case in point the brilliant karaoke scene between Rose and Baxter (Teixeira). Lucy Hale’s fish-out-of-water, newly arrived American rookie is a brilliant contrast to the two older, hard-bitten Brits. She’s young, idealistic, a Vegan, a member of the LGBT+ community, and definitely isn’t used to the drier-than-the-Sahara humour employed by her colleagues.
Ragdoll stars Henry Lloyd-Hughes (2nd from left) and Thalissa Teixeira (right) were joined by EP Sally Woodward Gentle for a Q&A after the screening.
Brilliantly Written
Oh the humour. For all the gore and intensity, I laughed so often during the first episode. It’s brutally funny, and very British. When they are examining the “ragdoll” Baxter and Rose riff on where it ranks in their most messed up crime scenes they’ve attended (while poor Edmunds stands in the corner sniffing mint leaves to counteract the smell). There’s also a line from Rose later in the episode which references The Funday Times that had me howling (and no doubt showing my age as I was an avid Funday Times reader back in the day). Both Thalissa and Henry both commented on the writing, saying that the humour in the script never felt forced or out of place.
“There’s this amazing balance and it doesn’t feel like any humor is shoehorned in for the sake of laughs. It just feels like that is the only the only possibility. The only thing we could say about this rag doll is something funny, otherwise, we’d all just break down. It’d be the end of the episode.”
– Thalissa Teixeira
I also want to mention the soundtrack. It’s a gorgeous affair by Moses Boyd that put me in mind of another detective show – the excellent Bosch – with it’s moody jazz and blues. It also lends itself really well to the show in another way, as visually it had quite a retro feel which was echoed in the music, invoking the detective shows of the 70s and 80s.
Where to Watch
Ragdoll will have it’s premiere on Alibi (Sky 132 | Virgin 126) on December 6th, with the second episode on December 7th, and the rest following weekly. It’s already out on AMC in the US.
