Detective in disguise

Anna Friel returns as haunted cop Marcella, who is now working deep undercover

- TESS LAMACRAFT, REBECCA MAHONEY, RICHARD MCLURE.

It’s been almost three years since Marcella Backland was on our screens. In a dramatic ending to season two of ITV crime drama Marcella, fans saw the troubled detective – who suffers from blackouts, known as ‘fugues’ – about to throw herself from the top of a building after discovering she’d been responsible for the death of her baby daughter, Juliet.

Thankfully, as viewers find out in a double bill of episodes this week, Marcella is still alive – although as we meet her again, her brown hair has been replaced by a peroxide-blonde bob, she has a new name, a new identity, and she has upped sticks to Northern Ireland.

‘We have a completely new location and different direction for the show,’ says Anna Friel, who plays the detective. ‘Marcella is running away from her past. She’s still suffering extreme posttraumatic stress after the revelation of what happened to her baby.’