‘Annika’ Season 2 review: Nicola Walker is back as the wry head of Glasgow’s marine homicide unit

As police procedurals go, “Annika” is one of the better offerings from Masterpiece Mystery. That’s thanks to the British actress Nicola Walker, whose credits include everything from “Last Tango in Halifax” to “The Split” to “Unforgotten.” No matter the role, she brings a restless wit to her characters.

As Detective Inspector Annika Strandhed, she’s the head of Glasgow’s Marine Homicide Unit, a division that appears to be entirely fictional, but it’s a role (which she originated for a BBC radio drama before it was adapted for television) tailor-fit to Walker’s talents. With her department-issued speedboat, wry outlook on life and a proficiency at her job, she is nevertheless battling the suspicion that she might be failing everyone around her. Socially awkward, she has a distinctive rhythm to the way she speaks — pauses where you don’t expect them — and a dry sense of humor that compensates for her personal flaws. Life is ridiculous; she’s no exception.

At one point, she loops in with her team on Zoom. “Is my phone linked to the screen?” she asks. Should be, someone says. What happens next is a trope updated to our era of mobile phones and videoconferencing: She’s attempting to pull up a specific image that contains a clue, but keeps clicking through personal photos instead, including selfies with the man with whom she’s currently sleeping. “Uh, no. Right, just bear with me. Hold on.” Nobody plays deadpan embarrassment better than Walker, as she keeps scrolling through her photos. “Yeah, that’s my boat. And that’s an octopus.”

This shouldn’t work as well as it does, but Walker knows how to play self-aware discomfort for laughs. Annika has a habit of breaking the fourth wall to speak directly to the camera (a propensity courtesy of show creator Nick Walker) where she’ll ramble about literary references that serve as a metaphor for whatever is happening at the moment.

When the team is called to the Scottish island of Jura, for example, it’s a location so remote that George Orwell once called it “un-get-at-able.” It’s also where he wrote “1984.” Annika has some thoughts about that. “So, before he wrote ‘1984,’ George Orwell left a safe life in the U.K. to fight tyranny overseas. It’s not clear if he parachuted into Spain, but I wouldn’t put it past him. And while he was there he got tuberculosis, a bullet wound to the neck and his own countrymen mocked his posh accent. But when he decided to write about fear — I mean proper, heart-stopping, stone-cold fear — he chose this place. So that’s not at all ominous.”

There’s a ruminative, conspiratorial quality to these moments, delivered with the droll, half-distracted, straight-faced energy of: “You see this too, right? No one else around here does, but you get it.” Sometimes, though, she can only manage fleeting eye contact with the camera, swallowing down whatever inconvenient emotions she might be feeling.

Following a case-of-the-week structure with serialized elements, Annika’s semi-estranged father arrives late in the season for a visit and throws everything into disarray. She’s also been harboring a secret about the one-night stand that resulted in her now teenage daughter. She ultimately shares this information in the clumsiest way possible, which only adds to her low-level but persistent shame. She is forever disappointing everyone!

The show has a tendency to overcook its finales. Last season, Annika was abducted, locked in the trunk of her car and nearly blown up. This season, it’s her daughter who is kidnapped. The series doesn’t need these dramatic stakes to keep it interesting, nor the cliffhanger that closes out the season (no word on a renewal as of yet).

But at least she’s not one of those detectives tortured by the work. She’s flummoxed by human interactions, yes. But who isn’t?

Are you going to be OK, someone asks? “I mean, that’s a huge question,” she says. It’s really the question we all face every day. With its dreamy theme music and blustery setting, “Annika” finds the bleak, human comedy in that.

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'ANNIKA'

3 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-14

How to watch: PBS

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