The Boy That Never Was and Dead and Buried reviews: Merlin star manages to be in two places at almost the same time

The Boy That Never Was (RTÉ) 4/5 Dead and Buried (Virgin Media) 2/5

Colin Morgan in Dead and Buried, his second drama on consecutive nights. Photo: VCO Films/Three River Fiction

Pat Stacey
Mon 2 Sep 2024 at 02:30

James Nesbitt is going to be jealous. He suddenly has competition for the title Busiest Northern Irish Actor on TV. The younger pretender to the throne is Colin Morgan.

The star of Merlin, Humans and Kenneth Branagh's Belfast appears in two new Irish drama series on consecutive nights. Beat that, Jimmy!

First up, and by far the better of the two, is The Boy That Never Was (RTÉ1, Sunday, September 1), a four-parter which pivots around the worst possible trauma any parent can imagine: the loss of a child.

Based on a novel by Karen Perry (the pen name of Dublin Karen Gillece and Paul Perry), it comes with faint echoes of The Missing, which starred Nesbitt. The malign force here is not a mysterious abductor, however, but a natural disaster.

Morgan and Toni O'Rourke are excellent as Harry and Robin, a married couple who live in Tangier, Morocco, with their toddler son Dillon and Robin's ebullient brother Oliver (Kerr Logan).

He's an artist, she's an ­architect and they're comfortably at home in their adopted community. Simon Callow plays Cozimo, a resident who's become their closest friend and lives nearby.

One afternoon, with Robin at work and Dillon sleeping soundly, Harry asks a neighbouring woman to keep an ear out for the child while he slips out to retrieve a present for Robin he remembers has been left at Cozimo's house.

He's gone no more than five minutes. But just as he's returning, the region is hit by a major earthquake. Racing home through the panicking crowds and billowing dust clouds, Harry is knocked unconscious by falling debris.

When he comes round and finally makes it home, he discovers the entire building has been brought down with Dillon somewhere under the rubble.

Three years later, Harry and Robin have returned to Dublin. The tragedy has put a terrible strain on their relationship. At some point Harry suffered a complete breakdown and is now on medication.

It's obvious neither of them have got over losing Dillon. She, at least, appears to have accepted that their son is dead, though, and even has some good news for her husband: she's pregnant.

Harry, though, hasn't really moved on at all. Dillon's body was never recovered, despite the rescue services searching for four days, and he believes his son could still be alive.

He's been secretly drawing portraits of how he might look at different ages.

While waiting for a train at Pearse station, Harry spots a woman with a boy who bears a strong resemblance to Dillon on the opposite platform.

The child seems to be staring intently at him, as if he vaguely recognises him.

But a train suddenly obscures Harry's view, and by the time he gets to the other side of the tracks, the woman and boy have disappeared, sending him on a frantic search around the station.

When Harry tells Robin about the boy, she fears the past might be repeating itself. A brief flashback shows Harry once tried to abduct a boy he believed to be Dillon from a Dublin park, to the horror of the child's mother.

The two leads are utterly believable in a drama that, as it toggles between the two timelines, works as both a gripping psychological thriller and a harrowing study of grief, guilt, remorse and unravelling mental health. Outstanding so far.

For our second drama, in a shopping centre car park in the middle of a downpour, young Northern Irish mother Cathy (Annabel Scholey) literally bumps into the man responsible for killing her brother 20 years before: Michael McAllister, played by Morgan, who she didn't realise had been released.

Thus begins Dead and Buried (Virgin Media 1/BBC1 Northern Ireland, Monday, September 3), a four-parter by Colin Bateman. Incensed by McAllister's seemingly perfect life (top job, big house, flash car, lovely wife), Cathy embarks on a campaign of revenge.

She starts with pranks (having pizzas delivered to his home), progresses to flirting with him using a fake profile on social media, then escalates to full-blown stalking.

Bateman has promised plenty of twists and turns. Maybe they'll come, but by the end of episode one, the plot is already veering into implausibility.