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Friends legend Helen Baxendale reveals why ITV serial killer thriller The Dark is 'properly frightening'

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Friends legend Helen Baxendale reveals why ITV serial killer thriller The Dark is 'properly frightening'

"I found that really horrific..."

A woman with shoulder-length dark hair stands in a doorway, looking ahead with a tense, startled expression. She wears a beige cable-knit vest over a brown plaid shirt and jeans. Warm light spills from the room behind her, contrasting with the darker foreground and creating an eerie, suspenseful atmosphere.

ITV

Abby Robinson

Published: Sunday, 12 July 2026 at 6:00 pm

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There's a serial killer murdering young men in ITV thriller The Dark, but contrary to what you might expect, rivers of blood don't run through the Scottish Highlands community where this unsettling story unfolds.

Writer Matt Hartley and director Gilles Bannier deliberately kept the gore to a minimum in the six-part series, based on G R Halliday's novel From the Shadows – a creative decision the cast were quick to praise.

"I think sometimes the less you see, the better it is, right? The more psychological effect it has," Tunji Kasim told Radio Times. "There are obviously darker aspects to it, but... we're not making… the Saw movies. And the less gory stuff you see and the less you push into that genre, the more you can focus on character and people."

Helen Baxendale echoed Kasim's comments, praising the power of the unseen and "leaving more to the imagination".

"Choosing to put the killer in a mask, I found that really horrific," she added. "When I read it, it's really properly frightening."

Mark Rowley also agreed: "What makes this really eerie and creepy is that they [the killer] is obsessed about preserving them [the victims] perfectly, and that makes it even more intriguing and weird, and you want to know more about it, and it's sinister."

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"I don't think you need to show loads of blood," continued Baxendale. "I think what goes on in your head is much more interesting and more frightening than what you show."

Laura Donnelly as DI Monica Kennedy stands beside a marked police car, speaking with a uniformed police officer and another man in a wooded area in The Dark.

Jatinder Singh Randhawa as DC Ben Fisher, Lois Chimimba as PC Carol Stewart. ITV

The six-part thriller follows DI Monica Kennedy (Laura Donnelly), who teams up with new partner DC Connor Crawford (Mark Rowley) to hunt a serial killer stalking the Scottish countryside after a young man's body is found eerily staged.

According to the official synopsis: "As fear spreads through the rural community and secrets begin to unravel, Monica finds herself in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the killer.

"But when the case becomes intertwined with her own past, she must confront whether her personal history could put both the investigation and her family at risk."

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Baxendale also appreciated that The Dark bucks the trend of making women the primary victims in serial killer stories.

"I don't want anybody serial-killed at all, obviously, but it's often women that are depicted as the victims, so it was quite a change that it was men who were the victims, young men. That was quite different, they've approached it in quite a novel way."

Laura Donnelly likewise welcomed the show's "different" approach.

"Even the nature of the crime and who the victims are was all very different from a lot of the stuff that I'm used to seeing, and I think that it is very, very tempting for any series that deals with this kind of subject matter to just lean into the gratuitous, and that's just not as interesting.

"What did interest me about these scripts was just how much more we were focusing on the psychology of all of the characters and the relationships between them – between Monica and [her work partner] Crawford, and between Monica and her mum and her daughter. I just find all of that so much more worthwhile digging into."

A person wearing a dark purple waterproof jacket walks through a misty, grassy hillside landscape bordered by blue-and-white police tape. Rolling hills and dense pine trees fade into low cloud in the background, creating a bleak, overcast atmosphere. Another figure in a white forensic suit is partially visible behind them, suggesting an active crime scene investigation.

Laura Donnelly as Detective Monica Kennedy. ITV

That, Donnelly argued, allows the story to foreground the victims and the impact of the killings on the community, rather than focusing on the killer.

"I've read articles in recent years about how that is also how the news should be showing things like this, don't focus on the person who's committing the crime, focus on the effect on the community," she said.

"I think that it is more responsible from a creative point of view, and I think for a prime-time audience sitting down to watch this, it's just far more interesting to be able to consider how you personally, as a viewer, might be implicated, what kind of experience that would leave you with, that you can relate to something rather than just stand completely outside of it.

"I think that if we're focusing on the people who are left behind, then there's more opportunity for that."

Meanwhile, Emun Elliott appreciated the decision to swerve familiar crime drama conventions in favour of a fresher approach.

"It's not procedural. I remember going in to meet Gilles for the first time, and him saying he wanted to avoid these sort of interrogation scenes and the trappings of other crime drama psychological thrillers, and I think it really stands out because of that."

The Dark premieres on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday 12 July 2026.

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Authors

A head and shoulders shot of Abby Robinson. She is in front of a grey background, looking at the camera and smiling. She wears a black zipped-up jacket with an elaborate gold and maroon design

Abby RobinsonDrama Editor

Abby Robinson is the Drama Editor for Radio Times, covering TV drama and comedy titles. She previously worked at Digital Spy as a TV writer, and as a content writer at Mumsnet. She possesses a postgraduate diploma and a degree in English Studies.

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