The new Netflix crime show, Marcella, starring Anna Friel and Nicholas Pinnock, will have a second season. The eight-show series labeled “crime noir” has a bleak tone to the visuals, soundtrack, and characters, and perhaps this bleakness left me wondering if my watching it was time well-spent.

Marcella is a detective who has been off the force for ten years at the beginning of the story. She comes back because it appears the murderer she tracked but did not catch in her last case may have returned. Perhaps she can contribute to the investigation by remembering her own history. But Marcella brings with her some gaping wounds. In the first episode, she sits trembling in her tub, possibly wounded. We can see blood on her head and the wall. Even when we see at what point in our non-linear storytelling she is traumatized in her home bath, the explanation barely connects. Did she do something and is covering her tracks? Is this a kind of Jekyll and Hyde story that will end with Marcella being the murderer all along?

In the first episode, she confronts her husband about leaving her, which happens in the first few minutes, and they fight. She rages against him and blacks out, but this isn’t a typical fainting spell. It’s “dissociative fugue.” She detaches from reality enough to lose all memory of what she does but is still able to function while detached. So she shoves her ex-husband down the stairs and calls him later to ask what happened. This is the chink in her armor.

Marcella isn’t presented as a genius detective whose skills outpace her police comrades by several steps. She just has good instincts and isn’t bound to a set of political rules or a timetable that prevents her from seeing uncomfortable questions. Some may see her story as a replay of returning star vs. uninspired police force, butting heads constantly over what should be done next. I see it more as a team of professionals with slightly varying priorities, looking at a difficult problem together. It works.

The season ends on a curious thematic note, a question that will have to be explored in season two, but I can’t say I enjoyed the story overall. I was interested, but I didn’t connect to these characters. I remember how invested I was in Idris Elba’s Luther. I wanted him to succeed. I hated the pain he suffered. For Marcella, I was a bit concerned but more puzzled. The storytelling doesn’t allow much time to develop her or the many (perhaps too many) other people around her. It dwells instead on creepy moments that tease you with another horrible revelation. Though the overall story works, it probably has too many moving parts.