Dead Against It
Michelle Forbes In Happy Ending
Series six of Waking The Dead concluded with a powerful story linking back to 1945 and the end of World War II. Fleeing Germany after it was clear that the war was lost, a family of Germans (the parents of which had worked with Josef Mengele), crash landed their plane in Britain whilst en route to Ireland, killed a Polish immigrant family, adopted their identities and lived a lie for 60 years. It was a complex and harrowing tale. The flashback’s to the concentration camps of the war were handled in a Schindler’s List style of grainy, black and white imagery although the viewers were spared the horrors. There was one particular scene where Stella had flown to Poland to visit the site of one of the camps and she was looking at photographs of the results of Mengele’s appalling experiments and, unusually for this series, the gruesome images were not shown. Instead we just see Felicite du Jeu’s muted reaction. This attention to detail made the feelings all the more horrific.
There was also some more great development in Boyd’s journey. His recent problems with Grace had been overcome (to a degree) with the psychologist now back at the office and seemingly happier but it was the arrival of an American called Sarah, played by Michelle Forbes, that had the most significant impact. Her particular affiliations and motivations became more and more appealing to Boyd’s O.T.T. style and the women in the office began to notice the blossoming of a mutual attraction. The fact that Sarah had been a friend of Mel Silver, whose death, and the circumstances and aftermath surrounding it, had been a trigger for some of his more extreme behaviours, served brilliantly to tie up some strands of storyline that had been bubbling along nicely in the background for some time. It was almost as if this could have been the conclusion to the last ever Waking The Dead story. I hope it’s not though, because I’m sure this show is capable of entertaining for many more cold cases to come.
Tags: Boyd, Felicite-Du-Jeu, Michelle-Forbes, Modern Drama, Schindlers-List, Sue-Johnston, Trevor-Eve, Waking-The-Dead
