Bang: Series 1

As the title hints, there is indeed a gun at the center of the crime drama miniseries Bang, set in the depressed industrial town of Port Talbot in Wales, but its reverberations echo far beyond any individual crime. Siblings Gina and Sam witnessed the execution style murder of their father as children. Twenty years later, Gina (Catrin Stewart) is an ambitious patrol cop eager to take on big cases, and she gets her chance after stumbling across a crime scene on an expensive boat and a body that was dumped in the ocean. Her brother Sam (Jacob Ifan), meanwhile, is a meek, reclusive underachiever, working a dead-end job while looking after an ailing grandmother. He becomes emboldened when asked to hide a handgun (used in the murder his sister is investigating) by his seductive, drug-dealing next door neighbor and he embarks on a series of increasingly brazen holdups. In the tradition of similar crime dramas, the investigation ties the crimes of the present to their father’s death and his hidden life of petty crimes, while it also leads Gina to a conspiracy surrounding a human trafficking ring. But the most interesting aspect of the drama explores the troubled family relationships between the siblings, their somewhat estranged mother, and their bullying stepfather, while also measuring what lengths people will go to in order to protect their family. Presenting all eight episodes from 2017, extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)