Passenger (Buchan, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

There’s a moment late in the first episode of the ITV miniseries Passenger that serves as a statement of intent. Much of the series’ bones initially seem familiar – a wintry small town, numerous oddball citizens, mysterious backwoods goings-on, a missing girl – all very Twin Peaks, very Fargo, very Stranger Things. And Passenger is a show in conversation with all those series, true – but then Katie Wells, who has been set up from the moment the episode began as this series’ Laura Palmer, walks in the front door of her home, very much alive, as a search effort is about to kick off to find her body. Series creator Andrew Buchan has made his point clear. We expect Passenger to zig, when what it wants to do is zag. 

Buchan is probably best known as the slimy Mark Latimer in Broadchurch, but has here gone behind the camera for this series which debuted on ITV this year, before arriving on our shores care of Rialto Channel this month. The show follows the residents of the sleepy town of Chadder Vale, a ‘pin prick’ (to use Buchan’s own words) of a settlement in rural England which is reliably populated by an ensemble of colourful characters and overseen by Detective Inspector Riya Ajunwa (Wunmi Mosaku), who has transferred there from the big city in what I read to be a quietly humorous nod to Hot Fuzz. A truck has arrived in town in the middle of the night, and someone, or something has broken out of it. Concurrently, Katie Wells (Rowan Robinson) has gone for a late night drive in the same woodsy vicinity. What she encounters there will be the central thrumming mystery that drives Passenger’s narrative engine. 

The latest buzzed-about international series to drop on Rialto Channel is this British mystery thriller, an across-the-pond fusion of Stranger Things and Noah Hawley’s Fargo series. Though Andrew Buchan (taking a turn in the writer’s chair, though he’s most well known as Broadchurch’s big bad) wears his televisual influences on his sleeve, Passenger retains a unique flavour of its own.

The three episodes of Passenger watched for this review suggest a clever and handsomely composed mystery that has subtle subversion on the mind. For one thing, most of the town is convinced there isn’t a mystery at play at all, something that we know not to be true but which haunts Riya, who has a nose for these kinds of things but is a fish entirely out of water in Chadder Vale, where the biggest crime tends to be bin theft. This leads to an interesting plot gambit – even as the sci-fi tinged menace begins to be felt on the outskirts of town and in the rooms of certain residents, Riya continues to hit dead ends, her investigation petering out before it can even begin. What The Passenger does well is hold our attention and interest even as Riya encounters these frustrations. 

A show like this rests on the shoulders of its cast, and the ensemble assembled here play off each other nicely. Mosaku, an emerging talent best known internationally for her roles in the Loki series and in this year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, has been a stalwart of UK and American shows like Luther and We Own This City, and it’s nice to see her get a meaty lead role of this nature. There’s a touch of Fargo’s (the film this time) Marge Gunderson, as the keenest investigative mind in a town full of simpler folk, and Mosaku plumbs the detective inspector’s fragilities to great effect as the series wears on. Also strong are the Wells family members, who are an appealingly working class, unvarnished lot. Robinson gets a lot do, and is clearly positioned as the series’ breakout, but Natalie Gavin as mother Joanne provides real depth in a role that could have been rote in another actor’s hands, while a simmering subplot about ex-con father Eddie (Barry Sloane) promises future fireworks. Where Passenger finds positive parallels to masterworks like Twin Peaks is in the depth of the ensemble bench – there’s a litany of smaller characters who emerge fully realised, and with plenty of intrigue to delve into in later episodes. The series is well-lensed, particularly in the atmospheric, snow-driven opening sequence. The real mark of a show like this, I think, is not necessarily the way the plot resolves itself but the pleasure we derive from simply existing within the space it creates. With three episodes to go, Passenger has proven itself up to the challenge. 

Passenger premieres Sundays from September 15 at 8:30pm exclusively on Rialto Channel.

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