Nicola Walker Returns to Solve Cases on Water in 'Annika'
Annika begins like most contemporary set British crime series, with a body, a dark and rainy night, a detective, and a delicate indie-type theme song. One might argue that Anton Newcombe and Dot Allison's "Bringing Murder to the Land" is slightly more appropriate than Oh Wonder's "All We Do" from Unforgotten. However, the latter cast Nicola Walker with hopes of a hit series, while the former is turning an already-existing hit BBC Radio 4 series starring Walker into a TV series with assumptions of its automatic hit status. The musical choices reflect it.
Annika: Let's take it as read we've done the name games and trust exercises and get started.
"Call me Annika," Walker tells the camera as she steps from the car. DI Annika Strandhed, to be precise, and yes, she's talking to us. (Walker is the narrator in the radio series as well.) She has to, as her daughter Morgan (Silvie Furneaux) points out the next day, as Annika takes her by police boat to school, her mother doesn't have any friends. It's Morgan's first day, and she's convinced everyone will think she was arrested. It's her mother's first day, too, having transferred from the Oslo setting of the audio series to Glasgow, and she's already mistaking boss DCI Oban (Kate Dickie)'s office for her own.
