gripping

Thrilling crime drama starring Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly is coming soon to Sky

Under Salt Marsh ranks amongst the most eagerly awaited crime dramas heading to screens in 2026, with Yellowstone sensation Kelly Reilly taking on an electrifying new character.

Crafted, penned and directed by Claire Oakley, and featuring Rafe Spall (Trying) in a key role, the series unfolds in an imaginary Welsh coastal settlement facing potential evacuation due to surging sea levels and perilous storms.

Following a shocking crime, the incident resurrects haunting memories of another spine-chilling occurrence from three years prior that left the close-knit community reeling.

Reilly embodies a teacher and ex-detective who feels driven to probe deeper when her previous colleague, portrayed by Spall, turns up to handle the fresh investigation.

With only days remaining before this moody and captivating murder mystery hits our screens, here’s everything we know about what lies ahead, reports the Express.

What is Under Salt Marsh About?

Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly takes on the role of Jackie Ellis, a primary school educator whose detective career was destroyed by her niece’s baffling vanishing three years earlier.

Following the discovery of one of her pupils’ remains on the edges of the fictional settlement of Morfa Halen, she must confront the traumatic past whilst forging an uneasy partnership with her ex-colleague, detective Eric Bull.

Throughout the six-part series, Jackie and Bull expose the residents’ dark and startling secrets to determine whether the crimes are connected and identify the culprit.

The synopsis for Under Salt Marsh states: “As a huge storm starts to form far out at sea, a teacher and former detective, Jackie Ellis, finds the body of her 8-year-old student, Cefin, who appears to have drowned.

“This shocking discovery stirs up the town’s memories of an unresolved case from three years earlier – the disappearance of Jackie’s niece, Nessa, which ruined her career.

“Cefin’s death brings back Jackie’s old partner, Detective Eric Bull, to lead the investigation in a community where he previously failed. Believing the two cases are connected, Jackie and Bull must work together to uncover hidden secrets in Morfa Halen before the storm hits and wipes away any evidence.”

Who features in Under Salt Marsh’s cast?

Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly and Rafe Spall head up the cast, supported by an impressive mix of established names and emerging talent.

The series also features Jonathan Pryce as Solomon Bevan, the town’s patriarch. Pryce has recently gained recognition for his roles in acclaimed dramas The Crown and Slow Horses.

Additional key cast members include Industry’s Harry Lawtey portraying local resident Dylan Rees, and Wolfe’s Naomi Yang as Jess Deng, Eric’s colleague.

The supporting cast includes:

• Dinita Gohil (Sandman, Greed)
• Brian Gleeson (Bad Sisters, Phantom Thread)
• Kimberley Nixon (Fresh Meat, Life and Death in the Warehouse)
• Mark Stanley (Happy Valley, The Reckoning)
• Dino Fetscher (Fool Me Once, Foundation)
• Lizzie Annis (The Witcher: Blood Origin, Extraordinary)
• Rhodri Meilir (Pren Ar y Bryn/Tree On A Hill, Craith/Hidden)
• Julian Lewis Jones (House of the Dragon, Wheel of Time)
• Newcomer Amara Atwal as Nessa

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When does Under Salt Marsh launch?

The gripping new thriller arrives in one week’s time on Friday, 30th January, streaming exclusively via Sky Atlantic and NOW. Two episodes will drop initially, with subsequent instalments released weekly each Friday.

The highly anticipated finale is scheduled to broadcast on Friday, 27th February.

Under Salt Marsh debuts Friday, 30th January on Sky Atlantic and NOW.

As metaphors for the American dream go, Gabriel Tallent’s taut and engrossing second novel, “Crux,” is exceedingly direct: It’s literally a book about climbing.

Its two main characters, Dan and Tamma (short for Tamarisk) are 17-year-old high-schoolers living in the scruffy outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park. Whatever free time they can scrape together is wholly dedicated to climbing boulders, despite their lack of equipment — neither can afford pads or ropes to break their falls, and Dan salvaged his climbing shoes from a dumpster. (Hard living is Tallent’s specialty: His 2017 debut, “My Absolute Darling,” centered on a tween girl living by her wits in a forest near the Mendocino coast.)

No romance is in the offing between the two — Dan is straight and Tamma is exuberantly profane about being gay — so their bond is built almost entirely around climbing. “Any day you were going to climb granite was the best day in the world,” Tallent writes.

Tallent is well-versed in the lingo of the sport, and some of the book’s finest, most lyrical passages are constructed around it: “Her left foot greased out from beneath her, and she came cheesegrating down the slab,” he writes of Tamma slipping on a boulder. There’s no glossary, but the main terms are clear enough: to “send” a climb is to finish it; a “crux” is a crucial pivot point. The language is infused with intensity, lust and earthy rudeness: Climbs have names like Fingerbang Princess and Tinkerbell Bandersnatch.

Dan and Tamma are climbing toward something, of course: He’s pursuing a college scholarship and she is determined to infiltrate the world of professional climbers. If that doesn’t pan out for either of them, Tamma figures they’ll just chuck it all and live off the grid in Utah: “After graduation, you just go, ‘I’m not going to college! PSYCH! I’m going to Canyonlands with Tamma! Later, bitches!’ Then spike your diploma to the floor and walk out.”

But as her intensity suggests, both of them are running from things too. Each of their families are struggling, laid low by astronomical, ever-escalating medical costs and poor relationship decisions. Tamma’s mother is partnered with a drug-dealing layabout; Dan’s mother, a onetime successful novelist, has a worsening heart condition.

It doesn’t help that civilization seems determined to cut them off from the desert’s wonders. Crowds of weekend warriors limit their ability to climb in isolation, and the region is rapidly filling up with “mansions, survivalist compounds, movie-star bungalows” and more.

“Don’t ever mistake this for a country in which you can set off on your own,” Dan’s father tells him. “It’s not a place dreams come true, at least not anymore.”

If the novel stayed in that lecturing, gloomy zone, it’d be easy to lose patience with it. More often, though, Tallent demonstrates his characters’ precarity rather than declaiming about it. Dan has legitimate reason to wonder whether his college applications are worth filing in an era of late capitalism and a dying mother. Tamma is trying to find the emotional stillness to deal with a dysfunctional family that makes plenty of demands but offers little support. In that regard, “Crux” recalls the best recent novels that have drilled deep into the physical and emotional damage of life on America’s lower rungs: Atticus Lish’s “The War for Gloria” (2021), Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead” (2022) and Ayana Mathis’ “The Unsettled” (2023).

Such a list might also include “My Absolute Darling” too. But where that novel was intentionally defined to make the reader feel closed in, here the Mojave Desert vistas are free and expansive; whenever Dan and Tamma make a break for the boulders, it’s as if their hearts have cracked wide-open. “Every crunching footstep was real,” Tallent writes. “And when you were up on the rock, then every crystal, crack, and ripple was endowed with indissoluble, life-saving importance, each dike and chickenhead inalienably itself.”

But if the desert offers a source of inspiration and possibility, it’s also an inescapably punishing landscape, and the main theme of the novel is how much success — especially now, especially in America — is going to have to depend on individual resolve. Culturally, this typically gets framed as alpha-male, gym-rat bluster about bootstrapping. Here, a woman commands most of the stage. Tamma’s best lines in the novel are unquotable in a newspaper — they involve physically strenuous sexual fantasies involving Ryan Reynolds and various members of Fleetwood Mac — but her exhortations are typically 10 parts insult to five parts inspiration, with a dash of terror that she may fail. “I’ve seen into your heart, dude,” she tells Dan. “Your mom, she doesn’t know who you are, but I do. You’re not that guy. You don’t want to be safe.” It’s fun, headlong reading with a shot of melancholy. She’s trying to convince him, and her — and maybe us.

Dan, as bookish as he is athletic, approaches matters in a calmer register: “How should I conduct my life? Do you trust yourself, or do you not?” Still, the fear and frustration are much the same, and in this novel the tension, smartly and lyrically rendered, is at once wide as the horizon — how do we survive in this country? — and narrow as the slightest of nearly invisible footholds its characters require to get even a little bit ahead.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

If you’re looking for a great watch in the cinema, this could be the film for you.

My mum, being a Sky Cinema member, receives two complimentary cinema tickets each month – and she alternates between taking my sister and me to catch the latest films. It’s a cute little tradition, made all the more convenient by the fact that her local Vue cinema (the only chain where the tickets are valid) is just a five-minute drive away.

This time around, The Housemaid was on the cards; having only seen the trailer and a few TikTok videos of women shielding their boyfriends’ eyes during certain scenes, I was bracing myself for an uncomfortable viewing experience. However, I found the film to be fast-paced, mildly risqué for about five minutes, and packed with unexpected plot twists.

The Housemaid initially focuses on Millie (Sydney Sweeney), an ex-convict on parole who is desperately in need of employment. Soon enough, she finds herself sitting across from Mrs Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), who just so happens to be looking for a live-in maid.

The offer seems too good to pass up, particularly as Millie has been sleeping rough in her car and washing in public restrooms.

Once hired, Millie’s quickly introduced to Mrs Winchester’s handsome husband, Andrew (portrayed by Brandon Sklenar), who initially appears to be a devoted family man dealing with an unstable wife.

In a job she can’t afford to walk away from, Millie finds herself biting her tongue as Mrs Winchester’s demands become increasingly chaotic.

Witness to his wife’s tantrums, Andrew begins to feel sorry for Millie and tries to comfort her, which predictably turns into an affair – but that’s when the predictability stops.

Unexpected plot developments arrive one after another, maintaining the film’s brisk momentum; before long, Mrs Winchester’s viewpoint emerges, and the audience are shown what really drove her to madness.

The two-hour runtime flies by remarkably quickly, making for genuinely compelling viewing. Plus, Amanda Seyfried delivers an outstanding performance as an emotionally fragile mother justifiably worried about her wandering husband.

Notably, Sydney Sweeney excels in her part – creating a character audiences find themselves supporting as she seeks retribution against the charismatic unfaithful spouse, convincingly brought to life by Brandon Sklenar.

What other people are saying

The production has earned a remarkable 92% popcornmeter score on movie review platform Rotten Tomatoes, with viewers hailing it as “one of the best thrillers” they’ve experienced – a sentiment I wholeheartedly share.

One reviewer stated: “Honestly, one of the best thrillers I have watched. Absolutely nerve-racking and exciting, would definitely watch again.” Someone else said: “Phenomenal. Much better than I expected. Definitely worth the watch.”

Provided you don’t scrutinise the conclusion too closely once everything appears resolved, this gripping thriller offers plenty to appreciate.

BBC viewers will see the beloved comedy series return to screens on Thursday night with some very familiar faves joining the cast.

Laughter is set to fill BBC screens this evening (January 8) as the second series of a popular comedy returns.

This follows hot on the heels of a new comedy featuring Dawn French and Mark Heap, which debuted on Wednesday night.

Black Ops, which originally launched in 2023, is making its comeback as viewers will see Gbemisola Ikumelo and Hammed Animashaun return as Dom and Kay.

The first series followed two East London police community support officers who unexpectedly found themselves working undercover.

Tasked with penetrating a criminal gang led by boss Tevin (Akemnji Ndifornyen), audiences were treated to a hilarious journey as the pair attempted to stay under the radar whilst Tevin grew increasingly suspicious, reports Wales Online.

Now, the cast reunite for a fresh series, which will feature appearances from Death in Paradise’s Cathy Tyson and Coronation Street’s Nigel Havers.

Discussing his return as Tevin, Akemnji revealed: “Series one was so nice, of course, we had to go and do it twice! Hugely excited to be going bigger, better and blacker for series two.

“Whatever is next for Dom, Kay – and of course Tevin – one thing is for certain, two things are for sure: it’s going to be a wild and thrilling comedy ride! Seatbelts, please!”

A synopsis for the second series reveals it begins with Dom and Kay working for MI5. Despite operating in the secretive world of espionage, their roles in the organisation are far from glamorous as they’re confined to administrative duties.

However, the situation shifts as an overview states: “All that changes when Dom meets a charismatic spy called Steve, offering the promise of more exciting, classified work.

“Dom and Kay soon find themselves embroiled in an escapade that tests their wits, their friendship, and their love of carnival to the limits.”

The series has received glowing reviews from viewers in the past, with one person commenting: “I find UK shows so much more my level of humour and cadence.. This show is excellent.”

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“The chemistry between the two main characters is spot on. It’s smart and funny and drama all at the same time. That’s hard to pull off. It’s a great storyline.”

Another viewer added: “Thought this was hilarious. The two main characters are a blast. And the series’ plot was twisting and gripping enough to also provided enough suspense to make me keep watching to the end. Loved it.”

Black Ops is available to watch on BBC One from 9:30pm

Viewers have been praising a BBC drama that’s been gripping them for months. Some say it’s so good they keep rewatching it, with it being deemed “better than Night Manager”

If you’re hunting for gripping viewing to see you through the bleak January evenings, BBC viewers are currently singing the praises of a particular drama series. While the broadcaster’s iPlayer platform boasts an impressive catalogue, certain shows have a knack for completely capturing audiences.

One such gem recently sparked discussion on Reddit when a user shared their obsession with a particular miniseries. They revealed they’d become utterly absorbed by it, watching it multiple times and discovering something new with each viewing. Since then, others have admitted how gripping it is, with some claiming it’s “even better than Night Manager”.

It’s not the only BBC drama to have audiences enthralled recently. Another adaptation of a well-known novel earned widespread acclaim just months back.

The Reddit user gushed: “The Little Drummer Girl is superb. At the risk of being a pretentious bore, the show really struck a chord with me. I watched it, and then immediately rewatched it. Now I’m watching it again.

“There’s a huge amount of depth here. It’s not Homeland, but it’s seriously good. Strongly recommended.”

The post triggered an enthusiastic response, with another viewer saying: “I agree with everything you just said! I LOVED Little Drummer Girl. Florence Pugh is fantastic in it. Very moving.”

On a separate thread, someone else declared: “I thought it was fantastic, one of the best spy thrillers I’ve ever seen. I chase the high of that show sometimes from other things, but nothing ever quite scratches the itch.”

A third gushed: “It’s a classic. My first exposure to Florence Pugh and loved her moments in just as she’s sassing Skarsgård. All episodes enraptured me to the very end. Excellent acting from everyone, excellent story, plot, masterful directing. Definitely would rewatch again. Recommended to anyone who enjoys political thrillers, espionage and/or spy fiction.”

Meanwhile, a fourth shared: “I watched the show first because I am a huge Park Chan-Wook fan and that is actually how I discovered Le Carré. I absolutely loved it. I thought the performances, cinematography and direction were phenomenal.

“Funnily enough, I haven’t actually read the book yet. When I tried to, I only read a few pages and put it down. Wasn’t in the right headspace for it, and was afraid I might dislike it.”

Other viewers have hailed the series as “magnificent”, calling it essential viewing. The stellar cast has also received widespread acclaim.

What’s the storyline?

For those unfamiliar, The Little Drummer Girl is a British spy thriller series adapted from John le Carré’s 1983 novel of the same title. The initial six-part series premiered on BBC One in 2018 and remains popular with audiences, still streaming on iPlayer.

The narrative unfolds in 1979, following a young English actress who gets recruited by Mossad. Her mission involves going undercover to infiltrate and dismantle a Palestinian organisation planning terrorist attacks across London and elsewhere in Europe.

The series features an exceptional cast, with stars such as Michael Shannon, Alexander Skarsgård and Florence Pugh all earning acclaim from viewers for their performances.

In certain cases, audiences have gone so far as to suggest the adaptation surpasses the original novel – remarkable praise by any measure. One viewer commented: “The book is a bit too long and meandering in parts, but the TV series definitely is worth watching.”

Another added: “Thought it was more engaging than Night Manager.”