Mayday 

Mayday in a small town steeped in pagan traditions where the crowning of the May Queen is the highlight of the day until suddenly she goes missing.

Stars:

Koko Anglo, Matthew Ashforde, Caroline Berry

Cast

Series cast summary:
Koko Anglo	...	Monty Hill 5 episodes, 2013
Matthew Ashforde	...	PC Bryson / ... 5 episodes, 2013
Caroline Berry	...	Jo Sutton 5 episodes, 2013
Daniel Coonan	...	PC Simmons / ... 5 episodes, 2013
Tom Fisher	...	Seth Docker 5 episodes, 2013
Max Fowler	...	Linus Newcombe 5 episodes, 2013
Aidan Gillen	...	Everett Newcombe 5 episodes, 2013
Richard Hawley	...	Richard Sutton 5 episodes, 2013
Harry Hunt	...	Alfie Hill 5 episodes, 2013
Hannah Jean-Baptiste	...	Charlotte Hill 5 episodes, 2013
Lesley Manville	...	Gail Spicer / ... 5 episodes, 2013
Peter McDonald	...	Alan Hill 5 episodes, 2013
Leila Mimmack	...	Caitlin / ... 5 episodes, 2013
Sophie Okonedo	...	Fiona Hill 5 episodes, 2013
Charley Palmer Rothwell	...	Jaden 5 episodes, 2013
Sam Spruell	...	Steve Docker 5 episodes, 2013
Jake Curran	...	Lawrence 4 episodes, 2013
David Fynn	...	James Spicer 4 episodes, 2013
Nicola Harrison	...	Amethyst 4 episodes, 2013
Andy Joy	...	Leon 4 episodes, 2013
Adrian Rawlins	...	DS Mills / ... 4 episodes, 2013
Victoria Carling	...	Sandra 3 episodes, 2013
Peter Firth	...	Malcolm Spicer 3 episodes, 2013
Lorraine Stanley	...	Angie 3 episodes, 2013
Sophie Stanton	...	Meg 3 episodes, 2013
Jackson Bews	...	Joe 2 episodes, 2013
Kerry Godliman	...	Amelia 2 episodes, 2013
Edmund Kente	...	Ken 2 episodes, 2013
Kate Lamb	...	Tina 2 episodes, 2013
Curtis Lee Thompson	...	PC Cooper 2 episodes, 2013
Joshua Williams	...	Philo Baxter 2 episodes, 2013

Storyline

Twin Peaks, WA comes to Dorking, Surrey as the villagers of a heavily wooded town steeped in mysticism gather for May Day, an annual festival to celebrate ancient pagan rituals. Fourteen year old Hattie Sutton is the Queen of May Day. A wreath of flowers and silky ribbons crowns her blonde hair as Hattie cycles to take catch up with the lead float in the parade. But, she never reaches the festival.

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Plot Keywords:

tv mini series | 

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Taglines:

In this town, nothing is what it seems.

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Genres:

Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

3 March 2013 (UK)

Also Known As:

Mayday

Filming Locations:

Dorking, Surrey, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Kudos Film and Television

Technical Specs

Runtime:

59 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

16:9 HD

User Reviews

Murder to watch

The BBC has lately produced two excellent hyper-realistic crime dramas in "Line Of Duty" & "Inside Men" and is currently bigging up its crime drama season this winter but this interminable 5 hour long mess was a disaster from start to finish. The story of a missing May Queen teenager in a small English country village and the dirty secrets this brings up from the depths of its inhabitants suggests an unlikely combination of the spooky weirdness of "Twin Peaks" (ironically, or perhaps not, the young victim bears a striking resemblance to the US series' Laura Palmer), with its coterie of strange, damaged characters each with more baggage than a hotel bell-boy and clumsy attempts at constructing a scary atmosphere, with the labyrinthine plotting of say, "Inspector Morse" where almost every adult male character has the whiff of red herring about them. It just didn't work on any level for me and ended up more like a wildly out of control "Midsomer Murders" instead.

Myriad stories are mixed into the plot, focusing primarily on a young rebellious teenage schoolboy Linus and his seemingly unrequited love for the dead girl's twin sister, literally the girl next door, but who himself has an unsavoury relationship with the local peeping Tom, a building manager, who himself comes to a sticky end, indirectly as a result of his run-in with the dead girl, who we are led to believe, at the age of 16, is the community eco-warrior thorn in his side, upsetting his construction plans. Takes breath...throw in the boy's own fractious relationship with his devil-may-care father, stemming from the mysterious death of his mother and that's just the CV for one of the characters, there are similar ramifications and reverberations amongst the other main characters too.

At no time did the action seem natural or real, the plot had more holes than Rab C Nesbitt's string vest (just what was the murderer's motive, why and how did he drag the body up a tree in the oh-so-mysterious forest and what were the stones that kept falling on the twin sister meant to signify? If I thought hard enough, I could probably come up with answers, but I honestly can't be bothered.

The acting was poor right across the board, not one relationship between any of the parties seeming real, with equally poor dialogue and narrative construction too not forgetting a feeble "supernatural" ending tagged on for good measure. Were the writers trying to ironically send up the "village murder" template in a post-modern "League Of Gentleman" way, I don't know, but I do know that this was really poor fare and the proverbial five hours of my life I'm never going to get back.