Watch or Pass?

The Irish murder mystery series Boglands on Acorn TV predominantly features the Irish Gaelic language, which shouldn’t deter viewers given the ubiquity of subtitles in today’s viewing habits. The use of Gaelic is significant because the story is set in an isolated Irish town where conventional law enforcement is not strictly observed, to say the least.

BOGLANDS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man exits a building, puts in earbuds, and tunes into a motivational podcast. As he walks, he exudes intimidation. Suddenly, a masked attacker ambushes him in an alley and delivers a severe beating.

The Gist: The assailant is Conall Ó Súilleabháin (Dónall Ó Héalai), a sergeant with the local Garda in his secluded Donegal town in northwest Ireland. Conall is known for taking justice into his own hands, as evidenced by him examining a photo of the thug and his wife on his phone after the assault.

There isn’t a lot of crime in the town, so Conall and Barry Roache (Alex Murphy), a constable who works for Conall, basically are on a 10-5 shift. They are seen in the local bogs by the water, helping a wildlife officer investigate the death of an eagle. Conall tells Barry to search the area — which could be a wide one — for “anything strange” after he takes a phone call from his father, Art (Barry McGovern) after an incident on the road outside of town.

In the meantime, Ciara-Kate Ní Bhráonain (Hannah Brady), a local reporter assigned to the eagle story, has her battery die on the road near the bog, and she flags down Barry to help; the two of them get quite chummy that day, much to Conall’s dismay.

The next day, Barry finds something while searching the bog; a body is buried under the peat. All Barry sees is a hand with a watch on it. When he calls Conall to the scene, Conall is horrified that he recognizes the watch; it belonged to his mother Sabine (Anne Marie Bridges), who disappeared in 2009

He calls Inspector Patsy Sweeney (Tara Breathnach), who is based in Dublin. From their familiarity with each other, likely ran point on Sabine’s disappearance; he tells her that he thinks they found his mother. She makes sure to warn him that he cannot have anything to do with the investigation.

Barry is put in charge of making sure the scene stays undisturbed until detectives from Dublin can arrive the next morning, but Conall insists on keeping watch. At the same time, it doesn’t take much for Ciara-Kate to get information from Barry, which leads her to tell her editor that this is a juicy enough case to cover in a podcast.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There aren’t a ton of Irish murder mystery shows that are almost completely in Gaelic, but Boglands (original title: Crá, which is Gaelic for “Torment”) is one of them. Another is The Island (An t-Eilean).

Our Take: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where Boglands, written by Doireann Ní Chorragáin and Richie Conroy, is headed by the end of its first episode. Having been shut out of officially investigating his mother’s death, Conall is going to reluctantly team with Ciara-Kate, who will be able to get information from people who are reluctant to speak to the police.

The first episode takes time to establish the story because it wants to really solidify the main players and their personalities. Conall has a streak of vigilantism in him that may or may not be related to his mother’s disappearance, it certainly also speaks to how things are dealt with in remote towns like his.

Ciara-Kate isn’t just determined and curious to the point of being intrusive, but her sleeping with Barry soon after meeting him means she has the kind of personality that gets people to open up, which is going to help her investigate this case as a civilian. Barry, of course, is young and naive, but seems to have a baseline of competence that might help Conall at some point.

Art owned a hotel in town with Sabine that was very influential to the town’s economy, and he’s been suffering in her absence. The hotel failed, and he’s only gotten more cantankerous since, firing a cleaning person due to mythical “sticky fingers.” But when Conall tells him that Sabine has finally been found, Art is heartbroken. That reaction shows exactly why Art has spiraled into a depression that Conall can barely manage to help with, given his issues.

The idea that Ciara-Kate is going to do a podcast giving real-time updates of the case seems to be absurd, just like it is in Only Murders In The Building, except not played for laughs. It feels like the podcast idea is a device that brings the show into the 2020s but is useful for little else; it just gives Ciara-Kate the excuse to keep pressing, given the fact that no local paper these days would have the resources to have a reporter that involved on one story purely for print.

At some point, Art, Conall or both will become suspects, but it definitely seems that viewers are going to be handed some red herrings along the way. Let’s just hope that those red herrings make sense, storywise, and aren’t just there to distract viewers.

Sex and Skin: Any sex in the first episode is implied.

Parting Shot: As we see Art and Conall at a vigil for Sabine, we hear Ciara-Kate’s voice over for the first episode of her podcast, setting up the situation quite neatly for viewers.

Sleeper Star: DS Sorcha Conlon (Caoimhe Farren) and Det. Cathal Keogh (Alan Mahon) will be the point people for Dublin on this investigation, and will come in conflict with Conall and Ciara-Kate as they investigate on their own. We’re also curious about how Inspector Sweeney (Tara Breathnach) fits in this story.

Most Pilot-y Line: It’s interesting that the writers decide to keep just how influential Art and Sabine were until the end of the episode, then let it all spill out in Ciara-Kate’s podcast voiceover. We’re not sure if that’s clumsy exposition or genius storytelling.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The central mystery of Boglands is definitely intriguing enough to keep viewers interested, but we liked the fact that the characters’ personalities are solidly established before the investigation gets started.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.