The Bay – ITV Mini-Series – Episode 3 Recap & Review

Too Many Cups Of Tea

After last week’s cliffhanger ending, The Bay returns where it left off, right in the thick of the drama. After recovering Holly’s bag from sea, the team slowly begin emptying the contents, scrambling to piece together what little evidence they have to go on.

It’s not long before they find a wad of money and DS Armstrong begins questioning the family about Holly’s savings. Before she can really get to the bottom of this, she receives a phone call from Sue, Nick’s Mum. It turns out Nick didn’t show up last night  and given the final glimpse we had of him last week, pedaling away from Sean’s speeding van, things seem bleak for his future.

Not to worry though, DS Armstrong is on the case and she sets to work trying to find out what happened to him while continuing to try and crack the case involving the twins. Sean calls Armstrong up on a running gag throughout the series, lamenting the detective’s desire to constantly make tea to soothe over any issues.

As Sean confronts her over the dirty secret they share together, Armstrong quizzes him over just where the £8000 came from. While home truths are spilled, on the other side of town Med converses with Nick’s Mum, Sue.

A break in the case sends the police scrambling again, as an ominous, dry blood stain throws even more question marks into an already messy case. It appears to be the spot Dylan died too but something doesn’t add up – the bay is around 100 yards away and someone would have to have moved the body for it to appear there. Quite what the true nature of the crime may be is still a mystery but it seems unlikely to be a one-man job.

Meanwhile, the true location of Nick is finally revealed to us, as Sean shows up at an abandoned warehouse where he’s holding him captive. Determined to find out what happened with Holly, he allows Nick to have something to eat before getting back to the business of grilling him for information.

From here, the rest of the episode follows a pretty procedural format, as both Med and Armstrong get to work investigating the family in their own way. Some revealing CCTV footage appears to puts the blame squarely on Ryan’s shoulders but for now, things are still incredibly unclear over just what’s happened to the girls.

After a particularly icy dinner with her daughter, DS Armstrong drives to the station where a bombshell is revealed. The forensics are in. Ryan is not the one responsible for killing Dylan. The prints match Holly’s. Holly is now the prime suspect in her brother’s death. This all culminates in one final twist in the tale as Sean drops Nick off a bloody, bruised mess in the middle of the street and we leave The Bay for another episode.

For the most part, The Bay delivers a perfectly enjoyable episode and there’s enough twists and turns in the tale to keep this one feeling fresh, albeit a little dull and formulaic at times. While some of the dialogue feels a little contrived and the constant tea-making is a little excessive, even for us Brits, there’s enough here to make for a perfectly serviceable crime series. Quite what The Bay has in store for us next week is anyone’s guess but given the big reveal about Holly, I’d assume we may just get some flashbacks before long to give us the crucial clues needed to solve the puzzle.

Given ITV’s track record with disappointing plot twists, I’m not holding out much hope for a really clever reveal but I’ve certainly been proven wrong in the past. Let’s hope The Bay delivers as the mystery is certainly reaching the point where we could do with some much-needed answers.