BBC's new Northern Irish drama with The Split star lets itself down (2025)

Dead and Buried is the latest four-part drama to land on the BBC. A psychological thriller, it instantly delivers all the intense, moody vibes you'd expect – although it doesn't quite manage to sustain them.

The Split star Annabel Scholey's stalker thriller starts off strong, if you ignore the clunky intro, heading straight to the moment that Scholey's Cathy comes face-to-face with her brother's killer Michael (Colin Morgan).

The pouring rain and the off-kilter music could have come across as hammy but, under these particular circumstances, it serves to underscore Cathy's inner turmoil, as her world is unexpectedly thrown out of whack.

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However, any hope at the potential of a tense watch sadly fizzles out as Cathy's impulsive plan for revenge goes from intriguing, to absurd, to unsatisfying – a reflection of the plot as a whole.

It's a shame really, as on the face of it there's something commendable about the fact that Cathy's approach to destroying Michael's life isn't calculated. Her decision to stalk and ruin his seemingly perfect set-up is driven by pain and trauma, which bears some extreme results.

That being said, while her behaviour can be rationalised by the complexities of grief, it's hard to side with her when the character doesn't evoke sympathy, and risks the lives of other characters who do.

This isn't a slight on Scholey's performance. The Split star leans into Cathy's trauma with gusto, pushing the character's angry pain to the surface in a visceral way.

Cathy becomes increasingly cold, more distant and obsessively singular in her thought processes. This in itself is not problematic – women don't always have to be portrayed with shades of softness, or even have to be likeable, in order to be compelling or to garner our favour.

However, the audience does need to root for Cathy, or at least be fascinated by her vendetta, in order for the story to build investment.

Dead and Buried attempts to ground and contextualise Cathy's hurt with flashback scenes of her and her brother, but they are one-dimensional and don't really do enough to prompt that sympathetic response.

On the flip side of Cathy is her foe Michael. Merlin's Morgan is enjoyable as a faded version of a man just trying to put the past behind him. However, his character arc also falls victim to the poor execution of the narrative.

Dead and Buried's main failing is that perhaps it's a little too ambitious in what it was attempting to achieve. As the story continued to build, the events became too overblown. Instead of sticking a strong landing, the story just gets away from itself.

Without spoiling the details of the ending, Cathy is ultimately left as unsatisfied as us.

Dead and Buried premiered on Monday, September 2 at 10.40pm on BBC One Northern Ireland, with the season now available to watch in full on BBC iPlayer.