Review: Hidden, season 2

Hidden, season 2, is a Welsh police procedural streaming on Acorn TV. The two detectives working cases in this Welsh town are Cadi John (Sian Reese-Williams) and Owen Vaughan (Sion Alun Davies). This season’s investigation starts with the murder of a retired male teacher.

Hidden starts season 2 soon after the end of season 1. Cadi’s father recently died. Owen has a new daughter. Cadi’s sisters are nearby.

The Killers

We know from the start who the killers are. The 6 episodes of the season take us along with the police as they search through the clues. We also travel through the story with the three young people responsible for the killing.

Mia (Annes Elwy) is the alpha dog in the little gang of three. She’s still in school. She’s clever, well read. Mia is also a psychopath, absolutely without emotion.

Mia’s cousin Lee (Sion Eifion) is her muscle, her driver, and a willing thrill seeker. He’s older and should know better, especially since he’s the one in his family who cares for his incapacitated father.

Connor (Steffan Cennydd) is still in school. He’s sensitive and troubled by what they do. Connor is new in town and just wants to fit in somewhere. He picked the wrong group to try to fit into.

Annes Elwy as Mia brings a new level of creepy to the definition of psychopath. She’s absolutely compelling in every scene, drawing both the camera and the actors around her into her orbit of danger.

In my review of season 1, I noticed how similar this series is to The Fall. The resemblance is still there, but they’ve switched the victims to men and the sociopathic killer to a young girl. Both Mia and The Fall’s Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) had mommy issues. I’m not enough of a student of psychology to know if this is a trope or a known effect of bad mothering. It does provide a motive for Mia to want to hurt and punish.

The Cops

The teacher they killed was once accused of inappropriate touching of a student. That leads Cadi and Owen in the wrong direction at first.

It takes another murder by the three young people to make Cadi and Owen recognize they are looking at the wrong person. Once they are on the right track, things heat up quickly.

Cadi works every minute of the day, to the detriment of her personal life. In the first episode she meets a new pathologist (Mali Tudno Jones) who flirts with her quite openly. I thought perhaps Cadi would date this woman, but nothing came of it. Cadi is such a wonk of a cop, we don’t even know if she likes women. Or men.

Owen, on the other hand, gets grief from his wife because he isn’t around home enough to help out with the baby. My biggest laugh in the series, which doesn’t have many laughs, was when she brought the baby to the police station in a dirty diaper, put her in Owen’s arms, and walked out.

Remember the house in the woods where the kidnapper in season 1 kept and tortured his captives? It’s sitting empty now. Mia took Conner there one night and gave him a lesson in evil. Another call back to season 1 was a brief conversation Owen had with the last kidnap victim – the one who survived. They met accidentally in a shop and had a pleasant chat.

Hidden is well-written, well acted, and an excellent series. It’s atmospheric – oozing with damp and rain and Welsh gloom. The directors are all men, as are the writers with the exception of Caryl Lewis. In one scene in a shop where much of the action took place, the shop girl Beca (Lois Elenid) was reading a novel by Caryl Lewis. That provided a nice Easter egg of levity in this dark drama.

The series is mostly in Welsh, although the characters switch to English in certain situations.

If you’re a mystery fan, I think you’ll enjoy this one. If you haven’t seen season 1 yet, it would be a good place to start. Word of a third season would be welcome news.