The Past & the Present Collide in the First Half of 'The Jetty'

What if you’re a police detective, and your latest case makes you rethink all of your life choices? That’s the conundrum facing Detective Ember Manning (Jenna Coleman) in the new series The Jetty (the series aired on the BBC in July). The case starts with a literal crash, as Miranda Ashby (Shannon Watson), a pregnant teenage girl, lands on Ember’s police car. Did she jump, or was she pushed? Still alive, Miranda is rushed to the hospital in hopes of saving her and the baby. At the same time, Ember becomes convinced the 16-year-old victim was likely 15 when she became pregnant and is, therefore, a victim of statutory rape. She’s also probably pregnant due to a relationship with a much older man. 

You might think this is pretty bog standard for a crime drama; however, things begin to veer sideways when Ember starts telling her adolescent daughter Hannah (Ruby Stokes) about her day, only for the kid to point out to her mother that she was 17 when Hannah was born. Moreover, her late father, Malachy (Tom Glynn-Carney), was much older. “That is not the same thing, Hannah,” Ember automatically responds. “Why not?” Hannah rightly wonders. Ember starts arguing that the legal age is 16 and that she was a whole year older than when she became pregnant. (As the saying goes, Ember doth protest too much.) 

However, Hannah’s comparison gets under Ember’s skin. It’s only been a year since Mack died of cancer, so she returns to her grief therapist, Casey (David Ajala), and tells him she hasn’t been sleeping since Miranda landed on her car. “My daughter thinks I am a hypocrite,” she complains, continuing to insist the two things are entirely different. Casey pushes her — is it just the legal difference that Miranda is 16 and Ember was 17 when she got pregnant? Ember says no, this man/perpetrator is attracted to young girls. “And your husband wasn’t?” Casey wonders. 

Ember has some competition to solve the case, thanks to true crime podcaster Riz Samuel (Weruche Opia) investigating in conjunction with the disappearance of Amy Knightly (Bo Bragason), who vanished 16 years ago and was never found. Riz meets with Ember and tells her someone left a note on her car telling her the father of Miranda’s baby is a “serial abuser of underage girls. “This is not something he’s done as a one-off,” she says to Ember. “It’s something he does. He likes them for their youth, not in spite of it. He’s a predator, and he needs to be stopped.” But Riz protects her source from Ember. “Missing and abused girls aren’t rubbish to be put in bin liners and hidden from tourists. They’re stories to be told.” 

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, Miranda’s condition is deteriorating, and her baby has to be delivered early. Ember also learns that this is not the first time Miranda has been pregnant. She had an abortion last year. It’s clear Miranda’s mother, Sheena (Georgina Rich), knows a lot more than she is telling, and Ember thinks Sheena might be protecting Miranda’s abuser. 

However, she still frets over Hanah’s comparison and continues to try to prove her wrong, only to realize she never knew much about her husband’s past before they met. At a run for cancer, Ember asks his best friend Arj (Matthew McNulty) if Mack had dated other younger girls before her. “What would it matter if he had?” Arj is confused by the question. “He loved you. He said his life started when he met you.”

Juxtaposed against all this action are scenes of a burgeoning friendship between two high school students. One is a stereotypical bad girl with a much older boyfriend; the other is named Caitlin, but rather tellingly, everyone calls her Kitty (Laura Marcus), who is infatuated with her friend, allowing the girl to use her by having a sleepover. Naturally, said “sleepover” is really so the girl can sneak out of Kitty’s house at night to meet her older boyfriend. 

Though these scenes slowly reveal themselves as being set in the past, it’s still a shock when the series finally reveals how they connect. As Ember goes through old pictures of her husband, Hannah finds one of her father and holds it up, asking who the girl is in the photo with him. “That’s Amy Knightly. The girl who went missing.” As the camera closes on the picture, we realize it’s Kitty’s BFF; Amy’s much older boyfriend, the one she was dating when she disappeared, was Maack. That, my friends, is what we call a plot twist!

The second episode starts with Ember telling Hannah Amy went missing the day after that photo was taken, just as Riz contacts her to say that even though Amy was last seen by an eyewitness walking towards the lake when she went missing, Riz has learned no one ever searched the lake. On her way out, Ember stops at her mother Sylvia’s (Amelia Bullmore) and can’t help asking if she was concerned when her daughter brought home an older man. Like Arj, her mother is puzzled. “What does it matter now? It was a happy marriage.” Ember starts questioning Mack’s whereabouts when Amy went missing, but Sylvia remembers that he was at their house. 

In the past, Amy and Kitty stumble upon Amy’s father, Russell Knightly (Elliot Cowan), and his real estate agent having sex in his office. Amy starts playing the piano to let them know they have been caught in the act. In the present day, a relieved Ember and her partner Hitch (Archie Renaux) interview a gentleman named Ali (Amer Nazir), the witness who says he saw Amy walking towards the lake. He insists it was on a Friday night, not a Saturday, that he saw Amy, and that’s why the police didn’t believe him. Ember realizes Russell left her alone in the house for the weekend while his wife, Imogen (Anna Wilson-Jones), was away and lied that Amy didn’t come home. He guessed Saturday night, but he was wrong. 

She drops in on Amy’s parents, confronting them with the rumor that they had a life insurance policy for Amy and to speak to Russell about what happened. “You picked the wrong day,” Ember tells him. He confesses he thought Amy’s passport was missing but later found it behind her bureau. He begs Ember not to tell Imogen what she’s learned. “It’s coming out. You have a tiny window in which to tell her.” The revelation that Amy went missing on a Friday suggests that Mack could have been involved, as her mother's recollection was for Saturday night.

Ember gets a text from Hitch that the divers have found something in the lake. But it’s not Amy’s body; they are pulling out of the lake when Ember arrives; it’s Riz’s. Perhaps she was getting too close to the truth. 

All four episodes of The Jetty are streaming on BritBox and Hulu starting Friday, December 13, 2024. We will publish the recap for the second half of the series tomorrow.