What Remains (2013) User Reviews

Aiming at the wrong flat

[Prismark10 · 7/10 · 16 September 2013]

When the decomposed body of Melissa Young is found by a couple in their new flat, Detective Len Harper who is approaching retirement is determined to discover what happened to her and why nobody noticed she was missing for so long.

This is really an old fashioned 'whodunnit.' The building is a house converted into 5 flats and nearly all the residents are not very nice people at all, some with some serious issues.

It is rather slow going, there is a lot of psychological games and this shows via flashbacks to their behaviour towards the victim who was an obese female.

The detective on his one last case before retirement is doggedly persistent and there is an air of a Gothic melodrama which the finale very much confirms as there are twists after twists as to who the culprit might be.

Check your assumptions

[zdarov · 8/10 · 16 March 2020]

I agree with a few other reviewers about the especially-twisting last segment. Stressful, laid it on a bit thick, but that did not diminish my enjoyment of the show. My strongest reaction to that was, we humans sure can miss a lesson (I think I can write this without being a spoiler): the new mix of tenants toward the end actually does what the first mix was so bummed about - not looking out for their neighbors.

I liked the acting, the characterization, the story. I happen to be reading about observation skills the last few weeks... working on perception bias (is what you first thought really a clear read on the situation), and this show ended up being a great lesson on that! Almost every scenario is at least a bit different than you would think on the outside. So, bravo on that.

I recommend a viewing for those who like the twisty mystery without excessive violence or ugliness!

Evil and lusty relations within limited space and plenteous time

[BeneCumb · 8/10 · 25 October 2015]

The Brits have made and are making so many good (mini-)series that, for the sake of novelty, one should find a distinctive feature from time to time. In the one in question, the events happen in a tenement house mostly, and their origins bring us back to the time years ago. The occupants of the house are different and seem happy, but soon it appears that nothing is so good as it seems...

The tensions are maintained, the flashbacks are clarifying (not annoying and enhancing length as sometimes), and the cast measures up to their characters - without someone who is evidently "better", i.e. more interesting than others. Well, David Threlfall as DI Len Harper spent most time on screen and depicted his odd character very well, but as it is my first conscious perusal with his talent, he was just "good among the goodies". But I have certainly fixed him in my memory.

The ending / final solutions could have been less trivial, with a twist or something, but, luckily there were no supernatural forces included. And last but not least - the title! With a sophisticated and versatile meaning.

How have I missed this!

[jeffreymnapier · 10/10 · 13 January 2020]

Classic who done it, but done with a modern take. Great character development, some real nasty neighbours living here. The best British show I've seen in a long time, even if it is five years old. If you like Broadchurch and similar crime shows, you won't be disappointed. AAA+++

More twists than Chubby Checker

[SaltyP · 9/10 · 25 August 2019]

I was hooked all the way through. Binge watched the whole series. Very clever plot and well acted I've never watched a whodunnit with so many twists and turns.

Agatha Christie updated

[paul2001sw-1 · 7/10 · 21 September 2013]

'What Remains' takes the classic Agatha Christie formula and updates it to the modern age: take a dead body, a house full of individuals all on the nasty end of normal, and a determined, dogged retired detective, and save the unveiling of the criminal to the final moments. In fact, whereas Christie's characters were generally thin, the characterisation is more convincing in this, although never truly surprising. The direction and acting are also highly competent, although the conclusion descends into (almost inevitable) silliness. Until that point, it's quite gripping, but also quite shallow: whatever remains, not that much lies beneath the surface.

Gripping

[pnpete9 · 10/10 · 7 November 2019]

Somehow missed this first time around but have recently watched on catch-up. Truly excellent acting and gripping story. An absolute delight to watch. This shows what the BBC could do when it had a well funded drama budget. Please watch as I guarantee very few can watch this and not be impressed and frightened. Psycho definitely comes to mind.

What Remains (BBC1) – Review

[brian-west-289-887982 · 7/10 · 16 September 2013]

We should know by now, from bitter experience, that when a copper is coming up for retirement it's a sure sign that something very, very nasty is about to happen.

So when DC Len Harper (David Threlfall) walks out of the nick for the final time we've already guessed that he's soon going to be taking on the biggest challenge of this life. Maybe all police officers should simply start work on the first day of their retirement. It might dramatically improve the crime statistics.

"What Remains" begins with a flashback as chubby, innocent-faced Melissa (Jessica Gunning) moves into the attic flat of No 8 Coulthard Street. Something about Melissa says "victim" right away. We fear for her safety. Our sphincters twitch uncontrollably in our trousers.

Clearly something's not quite right about this house. For a start, it looks exactly like the property in Simon Pegg's "Spaced", and several of the residents appear to have recently relocated from either Lark Rise or Candleford. There's also at least one familiar face from "Luther" which is scary in itself.

Poor old Melissa should pack her bags and leave right away, but instead, in true "Scooby Doo" fashion, she climbs up into the loft on her own and gets strangled by a mysterious stranger.

So, whodunnit? Grumpy old maths teacher Joe Sellers (David Bamber) is straight into the frame. For a start he has one of his ex-pupils Liz (Denise Gough) locked up in the basement, and he tups her wheezily at every opportunity. Meanwhile young Liz is less of a prisoner than we might think, and is secretly boffing the big eared boy from upstairs (Russell Tovey), while his very pregnant girlfriend is busy painting the nursery an unpleasant shade of duck egg blue.

While all this is going on, we discover that prior to the murder Kieron Moss (Steven Mackintosh) was cheating on his journalist girlfriend Patricia (Claudie Blakley) by regularly popping upstairs and using poor Melissa as a human trampoline. Following this athletic intercourse it's hard to see how the architectural integrity of the house survived, but somehow the building remained standing long enough for the murder to take place.

Other suspects include a couple of bitchy lesbians on the second floor (one of whom likes to bully the other by tying her up with straps), and Kieron's teenage son Adam, who spends the whole time trying to get into the knickers of his father's girlfriend. What's not to like? Everything and everybody.

I enjoyed this 4 part BBC1 drama, but it really was quite difficult to identify with any of the characters. They were all, at best, flawed, and most of them were just downright nasty.

Even with this in mind, I don't think any of us were prepared for the final episode, which left the claustrophobic and carefully distressed set littered with corpses and splattered with claret.

There was us thinking there was only one killer on the loose, and the woodwork turned out to be crawling with psychopaths – the denouement making the climax of Macbeth look like a picnic scene from The Famous Five.

OK, it was all a bit contrived, particularly when DC Len reached for his bow and arrow, but the twists and turns were so expertly engineered by writer Tony Basgallop that in the end we would forgive him anything.

Stylishly directed by Coky Giedroyc, "What Remains" turned out to be one of my favourite drama series of 2013 so far, but sadly I don't think there's going to be a second series. Everyone's dead.

Read more TV reviews at Mouthbox.co.uk

Once a Detective.....

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 10 October 2020]

DCI Len Harper, is due to retire, his last case, the death of Melissa Young, who has laid dead for two years in the too flat in a curious house.

I would suggest it feels very Ruth Rendell, this could easily have been one of her books. It's quite a bleak story, with an incredibly dark conclusion.

Not a House in would want to live in, all the residents are liars and monsters. Literally each room contains a cheat, liar or bully.

David Threlfall is terrific throughout, very strong performances from Russell Tovey, Indira Varma and David Bamber.

It deals with love, loathing, domestic abuse, and many other human ills.

A true house of horrors, it's very, very good, 9/10.

This series is short but has more twists than a den of snakes!

[calgarywino · 7/10 · 24 September 2021]

I started to watch this and actually had to take a break until the next day. How could such a small group of people living in flats be so depraved and lacking in morality?

Start with a dripping ceiling which causes new tenants looking for the source to find a dessicated body in the attic. Next, add a retiring detective whom is given a last easy assignment on his last day but feels like things are not adding up. When he can't leave things alone and decides that the woman deserves a proper investigation we learn about all the flat owners who, except for one, have few redeeming qualities. It just gets more and more depraved and disturbing.

If you are looking to pass the time with a light mystery this is not it; 'What Remains' will grab you by the guts and shake you. You might not sleep well, you will be unsettled, repulsed but I think you will be enthralled.

Gripping, Agatha Christie Type Suspense Thriller

[martimusross · 10/10 · 5 May 2019]

What Remains

This was very much a modern Agatha Christie, all the possible murders were assembled and what a bunch!

I loved it, just everything was in place, what a cast everyone was brilliant and the script was so well written and the actors just flew with it. The director was meticulous in his attention maintaining a comprehensive atmosphere of claustrophobia and menace, there were even some Hitchcock angles, wow!

We had incredible character development and in episode 3 it stepped up a gear, this was quite masterful, and the use of music to display nuanced emotion was a triumph. The dramatic impetus was near frantic with a near animalistic intensity.

One plot element that seemed to me unnecessary, the main detective didn't need to be retired, didn't need to have near OCD in investigating the case, didn't need to practically be under investigation by his own colleagues. This added nothing to the plot and just proved to be a distraction.

We need a series two, let the man survive his wounds, more of this please.

Gothic horror in a London loft

[sjhvii · 10 December 2019]

Basically rubbish which would have been totally unwatchable without the always excellent David Threlfall

So many suspects

[mkayj · 6/10 · 2 April 2020]

Really enjoyed this twisting story. Very difficult to solve this puzzle. Liked it!

House of Wackos

[Lejink · 5/10 · 16 September 2013]

This four part thriller shown on the BBC on consecutive Sundays turned out to be an excursion into modern-day Gothic melodrama mixed in with a good old-fashioned whodunit. Along the way it tries to make points about neighbourliness, loneliness and control as all of the inhabitants of a small block of flats conveniently seem to forget about the existence of the young, fat, solitary female who lived in the top-floor flat until two years after her disappearance, her bodily remains are discovered in the loft above her apartment, triggering the narrative.

Cue red-herrings galore and a backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards use of flashback to fill in the lead-up to the slain girl's demise. The viewer is kept guessing as to who the actual perpetrator is with a veritable procession of possible candidates paraded before us, including a seedy old teacher and the mysterious young woman he keeps in his flat, a pair of lesbians, one nasty and dominating, the other humane but servile, a careworn divorcée male newspaper editor, his reporter girlfriend and surly, hormonal teenage son, who are all joined by a young couple, him a feckless jack-the-lad, her a good-natured Indian girl, heavily pregnant, who move into the flat below the dead girl's and who actually make the grisly discovery.

Brought into investigate the death is crusty old soon-to-retire police detective David Threlfall, another Mr Lonely himself, who seems to relate to the dead girl so much that he pursues the case even after his last day on the job (and after his former colleagues have all moved on to their next cases) to the extent of staying overnight in her long abandoned flat, indeed for the epilogue we see him actually living there. He hits it off with the young mum-to-be and together they try to solve the mystery, indeed they are, along with the girl reporter, the only halfway decent people in the whole cast, the rest being an unappealing mixture of the venal, duplicitous, vindictive and just plain mean. For me this made it hard to relate to the bulk of the characters and stretched credibility to breaking point, I mean just how many horrible people can you fit into a block of flats at the same time?

Anyway, it winds it way to an over-the-the-top gory ending, with more than one dumb way to die along the way. Somewhere in it all is probably a moral about looking out for your neighbours, but along the road, the writer and director seemingly got consumed by some mystical Gothic bug and decided to try and whip up a kind of "I Know What You Did In the Loft" finale. It's reasonably well acted, although I'm tiring a little of Stephen MacKintosh's pained look in every character he portrays but on the whole this was an okay, if very incredible, whodunit, whydunit and howdunit which at least had me stumped up until the end.

More plot twists and turns and the BEST British Mystery Murder series in a decade

[kateann1027 · 10/10 · 1 January 2020]

WOW. I can't say enough great things about this unique BritBox channel mystery murder with more plot twists than I could even figure out (and as a psychic, that's unique) Amazing acting and quite frankly, scary and unique. A Must See!!!

Agatha Christie meets the Killing in modern-day Lewisham

[FlagSteward · 8/10 · 16 September 2013]

At heart, What Remains is an updated version of the country-house who-dunnit, a woman is murdered in a house that's been converted into 5 flats, and it's assumed that one of the other residents did it.

There's few tangible clues as to what happened so there's little for forensics to do - this is not CSI/Silent Witness. Instead the clues lie in the psychology and relationships of the residents - it's a bit Stephen Poliakoff in the way they're all prisoners of their pasts. So it explores the relationships of the suspects in a depth that you wouldn't normally see from Miss Marple.

Then on top of that you've got a few classic horror-movie buttons being pushed (not altogether successfully) and the hangdog detective working past his retirement date on just one last case. "You've all given up on finding the murderer, we owe it to this girl to find out what happened". It's a cliché because it works.

I can see why some people find the first half a bit slow, it's deliberately meant to be "static" and a bit claustrophobic with the vast majority of the action happening within the house. It maybe helped that I recorded it and watched the whole thing in one sitting, so didn't have a week to think about how little had apparently happened in any one episode.

On the other hand there's a few sub-plots in the middle that don't move the plot forward at all, they're just there so Giedroyc can expand his theme of loneliness in the city. It feels a bit self-indulgent when some of the residents' stories are left hanging at the end, either because he didn't know where to go or 20 minutes got left on the cutting room floor, it would be more satisfying if they had been resolved. I suppose it says something that you do care enough to want to know how things work out for them.

So this is not a show for people looking for car chases and shootouts. Personally I preferred Jane Campion's Top of the Lake which the BBC aired in the same slot a few weeks before. But if you've run out of Scandinavian detective box-sets to watch then this is a decent enough way to spend an evening.

gripping and intriguing drama

[jane_concannon · 8/10 · 9 September 2013]

I've watched the first 3 episodes (out of 4 I think) and am really enjoying this, as is my husband.

It is an intriguing mystery about a young woman found dead in an attic many months after her death, and a cop's attempts to find out who did it and why nobody noticed she was missing for so long.

For a TV drama, I'm finding this particularly gripping. It is very well directed and acted, particularly from the victim and the 17 year old son of the journalist. And its nice to see Russell Tovey's and Stephen Mackintosh's darker side - they are both very good too.

I can't think what else to write in this tenth line other that to recommend that you give it a go on catch up or catch it next time.

Outstanding

[g.f.farrelly · 10/10 · 15 September 2013]

This is a, outstanding drama in which suspense is created by uncertainty about the true nature of the characters in a house. The unexplained death of a very overweight, shy, lonely female tenant in the house is the start of an endeavour to get to the truth by a detective who is retiring on the day her body is found. His dogged continuation of the investigation after his retirement seems partly based on his own shock at the loneliness and insignificance of his own life outside the workplace.

The sense of alienation between neighbours and the themes of isolation, loneliness and secrecy simmer. The acting is uniformly outstanding and the house menacing. The ending is surprising, but believable and David Threlfall's performance is compelling throughout.

Brilliant

[StuDeb2 · 10/10 · 26 July 2020]

Just got round to watching this. Don't want to ruin it for anyone so will just say can't believe how amazing this four part drama was. My husband and myself watch a lot of murder drama's and this one outshines then all.

A complaint about the ending (may be spoiler, may not be)

[wmadavis · 5/10 · 16 September 2013]

This review is ABOUT the ending, but it doesn't reveal the ending.

I just sat through the 4-part "What Remains," about the various characters in a small apartment house, and a retired detective's obsession with finding out what happened to an overweight girl whose body was found in the attic and whose disappearance had gone unnoticed for two years. I found it easily held my interest until the end, when it decided to have multiple endings. I'm always disappointed with British mysteries when they do that. I expect them to be mature enough to play out their mystery and denouement and say "that's it," but too often shows like this will lose faith in the resolution of the story, and think they have to throw in a twist or two or three at the end to give a shock to the sheeple. It just seems very immature and destroys any credibility the story had. Like the end of FATAL ATTRACTION, when the murderous woman is drowned in the bathtub, but that's not enough, so they have her jump out of the water ready to kill and the wife shoots her, because she suddenly has a gun and knows how to use it. It's a cheap gimmick you'd expect to find in crappy horror films, not a fine British drama. MAYDAY, from earlier this year, was another decent drama that twisted and was ultimately a complete cheat at the end.

I would have rated this program an 8 or better if not for the ending.

Liking this show a lot!

[charland-t · 10/10 · 9 September 2013]

I was looking for something to watch, and I noticed it was the pilot episode, so I watched this woman walk in, enjoy her chocolate bar, and suddenly go upstairs!...What follows is the feeling of Alice in wonder land wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes...It's an interesting way to pilot a series, starting with the very end first. I did not expect it and I feel it's playing well between how the characters are in the present, and as depicted in the past. Rating it a 10/10 because I came here looking for season 1 episode 3 to watch! The suspense is certainly there with this show, none of the characters feel out of place and actually you really have to wonder what role they all are going to play in upcoming episodes.

Dramatic investigation of a young woman's unexplained death

[dreamquestin · 8/10 · 9 September 2013]

My husband and I have been very intrigued and thoroughly enjoying the "What Remains" series! I had not seen any information at all when I watched the first episode and wasn't sure what kind of series it was going to be at all.

I will concede that the first episode is a bit slow, but this is because they are setting the stage and introducing the players. The story is very enthralling as more and more of the young woman's life (as well as the inter-relations with her neighbours) are exposed by the investigation.

It is an interesting, if sad, commentary on today's self-focused lifestyle, where people don't know their neighbours and how that allows for all manner of unsavory secrets up to and possibly including murder!

It is spectacularly acted and directed. Having only opportunity to watch the first two episodes, I am looking forward to episode 3 and 4!

Modern take on Murder?

[suejsaunders · 10/10 · 11 June 2019]

Really enjoying this series so far, interesting story, characters and setting.

Great mystery with many twists and surprises!

[robinwestmiller-08883 · 8/10 · 6 August 2020]

Being stuck-at-home allows tons of free time to watch some really terrific British series on Acorn and Britbox! So many surprises in this series, the last 10 minutes are shocking. The only questions I have is just WHY anyone would live in this apartment complex with ALL those deaths/infidelities and totally CRAZY neighbors? And why does Indira Varma, a wonderful married actress, constantly get casts in lesbian roles? What Remains and For Life (in the US) (that's meant to be a joke... she's a great actress, that's why!!)

BEST DRAMA FROM BBC FOR YEARS

[juliemorrissmith · 10/10 · 21 July 2023]

A detached mansion style house, split into 5 apartments. A decomposed body is found in the loft and turns out to be a tenant from the top flat.

The residents in the house all have their own stuff going on; a young couple who are pregnant, a lesbian couple in a coercive relationship, a man who has his son and his lover each visiting but not knowing about the other, and a lecherous disabled school master in the basement.

Each have a connection with the deceased but was it suicide or murder?

Len Harper is on his last day in the Police before his retirement. He goes to the house when the body is reported but has to let go at the end of the day. Whilst the team in CID (?) seem uninterested to investigate, Len is curious and determined not to let it go I investigated. So he does a bit of digging around and begins to find the links and dark secrets that are deeply hidden!

Twists and turns kept me gripped until the closing scene in the last episode. Very unusual for the BBC, not woke, not anti-men, not cringy at all. I wish they would produce more decent material like this rather than waste their resources on mediocre dramas that panda to the few.

15/10!!!