It seems at first to be your standard six-part mystery-thriller. The Ridge opens with the protagonist, Mia (Lauren Lyle, last seen in The Bombing of Pan Am 103 and as the eponymous Karen Pirie, and so good in everything) having nightmares about her traumatic childhood. She wakes to a morning routine of yoga and deep breathing – though that doesn’t seem to help as much as the opioid patch she whacks on her thigh – before heading to the local hospital, where she works as an anaesthetist and where a patient comes round during an operation, then dies on the table.
But that is only the first layer of what becomes a veritable millefeuille of a drama. For Mia then heads off to Te Koi Ridge in New Zealand to attend the wedding of her semi-estranged, ecowarrior younger sister, Cassy (Connor Amor-Bendall). As the plane takes off, Mia receives a call from Cassy begging for help. By the time the plane touches down, Cassy is missing and the townsfolk, including her fiance, Ewan Carmichael (Jay Ryan), and his best friend, Teddy (Kauri Williams), are out looking for her. Teddy finds her body at the bottom of a cliff. Did the experienced climber fall, as everyone seems willing to assume, or was she – as Mia is far more ready to believe – pushed?
