ITV’s ‘incredible’ crime drama The Bay is back tonight as police start to hone in on just who killed Hannah.
The fifth season of The Bay continues to deliver twists aplenty as DS Jenn Townsend (Marsha Thomason) returns to duty following the death of her father, only to be immediately thrust into a complex and emotionally charged case. This time, she finds herself navigating the grief of not one but two bereaved families.
But as well as hooking viewers with its tense storyline, another thing is captivating audiences – the bucolic Lancashire backdrop. With each season, The Bay has showcased different corners of Morecambe, and series five is no exception as this season moves out of the town centre and focuses a large part of the drama on Glasson Dock, a beautiful village outside Lancashire at the mouth of the River Lune.
Writer Daragh Carville spoke to the Leicester Mercury about how familiarising himself with the area has helped shape the story. “We do go to new places this time around. I know the place like the back of my hand, and one of the useful things in knowing a place really well is it opens up an avenue of a story that you wouldn’t otherwise think of,” he said.
As well as Glasson Dock, where Hannah’s murdered body was discovered in a canal lock, another striking location this season is the nuclear power station at Heysham. It’s a dominant feature of Morecambe’s skyline that has been part of the show’s opening credits since series one but never explored on screen until now. “That was quite exciting,” Carville noted.
The series also sees a shift in its characters’ home lives, with Jenn and DI Tony Manning (Daniel Ryan) both moving into new homes in different parts of town. “So we see new and different parts while also returning to some of our key locations, the police station and so on,” he added.
Morecambe’s significance to the show remains central. “The show is called The Bay for a good reason because you could say the central character is the place,” Carville said. “We always want to explore different aspects of it and show it at its best but also be unafraid to go to those darker places.”
He spoke about his enduring fascination with Morecambe, describing its “wonderful old buildings and a sense of faded grandeur.” He called it a “beautiful but tough place” that contends with “real deprivation and poverty.”
This season also sees Endeavour star Shaun Evans step in as a director, and he revealed another unique location featured in the new episodes. “We found a terrific location called Sunderland Point, which is this unique landscape that gets cut off from the mainland once or twice a day,” he said.
While logistically challenging, he described the setting as visually stunning. “It was logistically very difficult but visually a very satisfying place to work. It looks incredible—water and sky—but also there is something interesting about that as an idea as well. This family who are grieving, which is cut off from the mainland, cut off from society, and what that does to the family.”
The Bay returns to ITV at 9pm on Sunday, March 9.
