TV: Prey

Prey, ITV's answer to The Fugitive, ended on Monday and it was a bit of a damp squib.

Prey was the perfect example of the thrill of the chase being more exciting than the ending.  The ‘hunted man’ story is enormous fun, especially when Our Hero is being hunted by the police, as the majority of dramas and films still have us on the side of the authorities by default.  Even when we know Our Hero is innocent, there is still something nicely subversive about being asked to identify with a man on the run from the law.

Our Hero in Prey is Marcus Farrow, a policeman wrongly suspected of murdering his wife.  Farrow’s got a violent temper but is on the whole a good person, and he is played by John Simm, which makes him at least 50% more interesting.  He goes to ground and tries to find out what really happened to his wife before the police catch him by doing research into a murky case he was working on at the time. 

There were lots of very good set pieces in Prey, nearly all of which featured John Simm on the run and nearly but not quite being caught.  Because Marcus Farrow had a violent character when irked, you were genuinely concerned that he might accidentally murder someone in his desperation.  Lots of sneaking around and subterfuge – this is what Prey did well.  Very well in fact, for at least half its screentime.

The ‘hunted man’ story is all about the set pieces, which is why conclusions can be such a pisser.  Yes, we do want to know what all the running around has been in aid of, but it needs to pull off the trick of being satisfying without being too drawn out or implausible.  But last episodes have to be about the conclusion.  Prey demonstrated in its third and final episode how hard it can be to finish a series with aplomb by giving us resolution, resolution, resolution.

The thing is, the cat and mouse stuff can keep on going for ages and still be entertaining even on a relatively simple plot, but Prey had a cover-up conspiracy as its premise which meant that it was setting itself up for giving an ‘epic revelation’ conclusion.  But it couldn’t convincingly do this, instead opting for one of the most clichéd wrap-up plots in thriller stories (the one person he thought he could trust whilst he was on the run turns out to be the baddie!  Who would have thought it!) But even then it didn’t quite work, because the big reveal of the villain happened far too early in the episode, meaning that too much of it felt like it was spent hanging around waiting for Marcus to catch up with us.  During the first two episodes, we had great fun complimenting John Simm on his cleverness from our sofa and basically enjoying the ride, but the last episode gave us too much time to work out that some of this was a little bit silly.

Which is a shame, because Prey was working really, really well as a cat and mouse chase drama – The Fugitive, set in Manchester – but sort of opted not to be one in the end and being a police melodrama instead.  Plot points were piled on for absolutely no reason – Farrow’s friend Shaun had betrayed him in episode 1, OK, fine.  But having Shaun then confess to Farrow he’d been sleeping with his wife for the last 10 years at the end made it seem like a soap with guns.  It managed to make the ending feel rushed and drawn out at the same time.  Prey kept the audience watching through the momentum of the action, but by its end it was obvious the action was supporting the plot and not the other way round.

At the end of it all though, I don't think it necessarily matters if the ending of something like Prey is a damp squib.  If you watch something that you pretty much know is going to be mainly enjoyable for the thrill of the chase, you can't complain that you didn't enjoy the bit after the chase had finished.  It just would have been a bit more satisfying if it had ended with more style instead of falling on back on cliche and melodrama.