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Marcella review – Anna Friel thriller doesn't shock like it used to

ITV’s troubled, amnesiac detective is back – deep undercover in Belfast – but the credulity-stretching twists are just too much this time around

If ever there is a “previously on …” to look forward to, it would be Marcella’s (ITV), if only to see how much they could pack into a single recap. The third season of the largely ludicrous crime noir begins with Marcella, a former-ish detective (Anna Friel, often in the bath), deep undercover in Belfast. She has assumed a new life as Keira Devlin, which she is able to do, you may recall, because she is supposed to be dead, having cut her own mouth open with scissors at the end of the last season in one of her violent fugue states, after learning that she was responsible for the death of her baby daughter. That is the short version of events, anyway.

In Belfast, Marcella/Keira is struggling to tell the difference between the two. She is attempting to embed, with the emphasis on bed, herself within the Maguire family, who live a kind of Downton-meets-Top Boy lifestyle, running the organised crime scene in the city and beyond. The fugue states seem to have disappeared without a mention, though maybe they are saving them up for one big blackout. Keira is shacked up in a nice house, with a nice car and a nice boyfriend, Lawrence, who does the accounts for the Maguires, while sneakily helping himself to a slice of the profits.

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