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‘Loch Ness’ Is Full Of Suspense, Quite A Few Red Herrings And A ‘Downton Abbey’ Alum

By Amy Feinstein
Published on: 16:31 PST, Jun 18, 2017

Loch Ness is the new mystery series on the streaming service Acorn by way of British television’s ITV, and if you are expecting a monster/sci-fi mystery, you are way off the mark. Loch Ness is a mystery set in the Scottish town where the myth of Loch Ness is alive and well, but there is no role being cast for a giant water brontosaurus. It doesn’t give anything away to say that Loch Ness is more of a metaphor of the secrets that lie beneath for everyone in the small town, and seriously, everyone has a secret. And if while watching you think that someone looks or maybe sounds familiar, if you were a fan of Downton Abbey, you would be right because Siobhan Finneran, who played Cora’s lady’s maid O’Brien, is the chief investigator.

Loch Ness is just the latest contemporary series on Acorn, which adds new shows each month and has just broken into the production game with Agatha Raisin and now Loch Ness. While Acorn does not just do mystery series, it does them very well in the vein of Agatha Christie, but Acorn, known as the “curator of the best of British television,” is not your grandma’s murder mystery. While the streaming service has plenty of the traditional shows, they are breaking boundaries in introducing a whole new audience into what British television and English language television from around the world, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland has to offer. And fans of Acorn are not getting the old stale stuff, but rather new episodes of many shows just after they air in the U.K.

If you decide to watch Loch Ness, carve out some time, because the series will suck you in, and beware because there is quite the body count stacking up. And the more you think you know, the less you actually know because the series might be better titled Red Herrings rather than Loch Ness. In the spirit of Nessie, there is plenty going on just below the surface of this small Scottish coastal town. Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times said it best, that the only real monsters in Loch Ness are human.

If you are a fan of Broadchurch, you will find Loch Ness familiar, as there is a small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone else, and the police (most of whom have never investigated a murder) are a big part of the community. But because the town has little or no experience with murder, an expert is brought in from Glasgow to lead the team. And also like Broadchurch, and perhaps a bit like Vera, the youth of the town are a bit bored, and so there is more than a little bit of mischief going on.

Viewers meet the first (or is he the first victim?) briefly before he meets an untimely death at the bottom of a cliff, and at first, some wonder if it was an accident or perhaps suicide, but the medical examiner quickly labels it a homicide and a grisly one at that.

“Part of the prefrontal cortex is missing. It was removed via the nasal cavity while the victim was still alive.”

Pretty quickly the town and its residents realize that there is a serial killer amongst them, and it’s someone they all know, but with each search warrant and questioning session, everyone begins to realize that nobody in Loch Ness is innocent.

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It would be wrong to give any tips or spoilers in this six-episode series, but one last reason to watch Loch Ness is the scenery. Though it’s not part of the soundtrack of Loch Ness (but it should be), you can almost hear the Police song “Many Miles Away,” about what lives at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake, which could be talking about the fictional Scottish town of Lochenfoy (which is actually the gorgeous town of Fort Augustus.

And while water is almost a character in Loch Ness, one can’t dismiss the harsh yet beautiful terrain which includes Carn Mohr Mountain, which plays a role in the death of the first body found.

Are you interested in watching Loch Ness? What is your favorite series on Acorn?

[Featured Image by Acorntv]

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